The long-awaited Benghazi report is out, and it catalogues a multitude of omissions and commissions that should outrage Americans of any party or persuasion.
Of course, it won’t. The CNN article I just linked which describes the content of the report has a title that is certainly correct but lets you know that the editors want you to look at the headline, yawn, and pass it by: “Benghazi panel caps 2-year probe: No bombshell, faults administration.” The New York Times is even more obvious in its emphasis: “House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.” If you want to see the way this particular line of coverage generally went, see this. Other articles mention the lack of a “smoking gun” against Clinton.
But who expected a smoking gun to be revealed at this point? The report is a summary of several years of investigation, some of it involving public hearings and much of it discussed previously. There are indeed new details, but the idea that there should have been some sort of Perry Mason reveal is preposterous.
For some reason, however, NBC’s headline dissents from the common MSM line: “House Republicans’ Report Sheds New Light on Benghazi Attack.” New light? From the article you find this sort of thing:
Democrats accused Republicans of using the inquiry to hurt Clinton’s chances at the presidency. But after more than two years and an estimated $7 million, the report, released Tuesday, instead paints a more nuanced portrait of incompetence.
Just a little old-fashioned nuanced incompetence, folks.
It goes on:
…[O]ther Republican committee members criticized Clinton more directly, accusing her of prioritizing America’s relationship with Libya over security at the Benghazi compound, and of trying to spin the attack for political gain. Members Jim Jordan of Ohio and and Mike Pompeo of Kansas wrote their own report, labeled “additional views,” focuses on Clinton, accusing her of missing opportunities to protect American lives.
In that sense, the committee’s findings could underscore accusations that the Obama administration ”” and Clinton’s State Department ”” were more concerned with public perception than with acting decisively to save American lives.
There is really very little question about the truth of those accusations, because we know—and yes, we’ve known for a long time—that Hillary knew that the video had nothing to do with the attack and yet lied to the American people and to the families of the slain men for political reasons. And in this she was joined by most of the Obama administration in that fall of 2012, an election year.
But really—“what difference at this point does it make?” That’s Hillary Clinton’s famous quote from the Benghazi hearings, and in the case of this report it’s spot on. No, the report has no “new” smoking gun, nor should it. It contains enough information that in a sane world would preclude Clinton from running for president and certainly from being elected president. But as it is, it will change virtually no one’s mind.
By the way, I want to revisit that quote for just a moment more, because it galls me that no one seems to remember this aspect of it (which I wrote about thusly two years ago):
…[H]ere’s the [Clinton] quote:
With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?
So, was it “because of a protest”? Or was it some random chaotic act “because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans”?
Well, how about: “Neither, Hillary, and what’s more, you know it was neither. Both suggestions are absurd. It actually was a group of organized terrorists who planned an attack, and succeeded in killing not just ”˜some’ random Americans, but the ambassador and three protectors.”
I’ve long wondered why that part of the quote has been pretty much ignored.
So, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest (again), I’ll highlight a couple of revelations in the report that were news, at least to me:
The Republican majority’s report found that 35 Americans were saved not by a “quasi-governmental militia” as previous reports concluded, or even a group the U.S. saw as allies. Instead, the report determines that the Americans were saved by the “Libyan Military Intelligence,” a group composed of military officers under the Moammar Khaddafy regime, the Libyan dictator who the U.S. helped topple just one year earlier.
The February 17 Martyr Brigade, “recommended by the Libyan Government and contractually obligated to provide security to the Mission Compound,” had fled, the report found. “In other words, some of the very individuals the United States helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks,” the report states….
The Republican majority of the committee also found that Stevens traveled to the U.S. mission that week to both fill a temporary staffing gap and to spearhead an effort to make Benghazi a permanent diplomatic post…
…”What was disturbing from the evidence the Committee found was that at the time of the final lethal attack at the Annex, no asset ordered deployed by the Secretary had even left the ground,” the report states.
Previous accounts blamed the “tyranny of time and distance” plus the failure to have airplanes ready for the significant delay in moving military assets. But the report states conflicting orders from State Department and Pentagon officials over whether Marines should wear military uniforms or civilian attire also played a role…
State Department officials raised concerns about the diplomatic sensitivities of the attire to be worn by assets launched…
According to one commander, the report states, as forces prepared to deploy, “during the course of three hours, he and his Marines changed in and out of their uniforms four times.”
Further, several witnesses told the committee that despite Panetta’s orders, the operating plan was not to insert any asset into Benghazi. “Their understanding was that the assets needed to be sent to Tripoli to augment security at the Embassy, and that the State Department was working to move the State Department personnel from Benghazi to Tripoli.”
Republicans on the committee were critical of high-level officials in Washington for mistakenly thinking that the attacks were over and the crisis had passed by the time the emergency video conference convened, which the report alleges contributed to the confusion.
Much more reporting and commentary can be found here. Here’s a summary drawn up by the committee itself that lists some (not all) of the “new information” the Benghazi report actually does contain. And you can find the full report in the links after that summary.
[NOTE: See also this from Powerline.]
