“In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”
“The paragraph was entirely deleted.”
— From an ABC News report on what the Obama Administration in all its political damage control simply didn’t want us to know about warnings and terrorist connections regarding the embassy bombing.
(Click here for quite an interesting (damning?) report from ABC News.)
The Obama Administration (which included Hillary you-know-who at the time) initially said “only one word had been changed.”
At the very least–the bare minimum–this whole scandal smells of some rank incompetence, or, political damage control that runs all the way to corruption.
It is writ: “And the truth shall set you free.” And, “What is done in government secrecy and “spinning the truth” will come to light.” (Or something like that.)
The embassy bombing story just ain’t gonna go away, as much as every news agency outside of Fox Nation–and I have to give them their props for hanging with this story–would like it to.
I said here before and now repeat:
It’s bothered me from the start that the State Department tried to blame this attack on protesters–it just never, ever passed “the smell test” for anybody–especially any reporter or news agency–who could have seen that this embassy attack had “terrorist attack” written all over it.
At the least, there should have been the sort of skepticism that would have led some enterprising reporter or news agency to really question the “protest” line and keep questioning with a minimum of bulldog persistence of the sort that, really, only FOX News has demonstrated.
* * * *
Think about it.
All the Obama Administration had to do was tell us was something like this in those now infamous Sunday morning news shows in which Susan Rice failed to utter the “T” word (terrorists):
“Look, we have all sorts of conflicting information and reports about what happened and how this happened. It’s possible it was a planned terrorist attack and we certainly have to pursue that angle. But mind you, I am not saying at this time that it was or wasn’t because we are trying to conduct a thorough investigation. We have to pursue a lot of angles at this time.
“It’s difficult get to the bottom of this sort of tragedy, where confusion and chaos always create a lot of fog, in trying to get to the bottom of it–and it’s only been a few days. Please allow us a little more time to sort through, to uncover the facts and the evidence, so that we can deal with this properly.
“In the meantime, we’re going to get to the truth, and we can guarantee the American people that we will be up-front no matter where the truth leads. We owe it to the American people to ensure accountability and transparency no matter what the truth reveals. ”
Of course, this wasn’t the approach they took–and politicians never speak of aggressively pursuing th truth when it comes to spin and political damage control. They have an aversion to the word.
And never mind that the best political damage control is for them to tell us the truth no matter how much it hurts, and then to fire or demand resignations from people who cross the line in damage control. (I know, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.)
And now it’s pretty clear that some heads should have rolled.
Maybe, Hillary Clinton’s included.
And let’s consider this: Maybe, just maybe, she would have actually gained even more of her enormous political popularity if he had taken the sort of full responsibility she kept saying she took–if she resigned. That would be real accountability of the sort that everybody nowadays speaks about–and nobody really demands (except, in this case, of all people, FOX).
It would have been the honorable thing to do. And unprecedented. And it might have silenced the Hillary haters once and for all.
Then again . . . It’s doubtful that anything could ever silence the Hillary and Obama haters even if Obama and Hillary had made American history by just telling us the unvarnished truth for once.
This was on Hillary Clinton’s watch. That’s all there is to it. And it was the State Department’s botching and spinning and horrible “damage control” that makes this a story.
(And BTW, there’s more damning evidence than just edited emails in this pointing to either horrible negligence or incredible incompetence in the State Department.)
Mrs. Clinton and the others have tried to lay this on the CIA–a most convenient scapegoat considering how uneven the CIA’s history is for doing great things but also botching things big-time. Not to mention how easy it is to lay blame on an agency that has to be shrouded in a lot of secrecy.
* * * *
It’s now clear to anybody who’s been trying to pay attention to this story, and to anybody more interested in the sort of truth that sets us all free, that the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s Department of State were concerned enough about political fallout to make sure that their inattention to warnings and signs of Al’Q’s Mode of Operation got thoroughly scrubbed.
This story, as they say in investigative journalism, really does “have legs.” And Jonathan Karl of ABC News is a fine and might fine reporter without the baggage of the Fox Nation, GOP Propaganda Network. (And ABC News does some really solid investigative reporting sometimes.)
That said, I have to hold my nose and give kudos to Fox for pursuing a story when nobody–and I mean nobody–has seen fit to question authority in the White House on this bombing–aggressively, that is.
And granted–it didn’t help that Congressional investigators and–FOX and all the cynical Hannitys of the world–undermined their own credibility by accusing Hillary Clinton of faking what turned out to be a critical medical condition to avoid testimony. Small wonder that, for a long time, people weren’t willing to pay much attention to Fox on the embassy bombing. By sneering and joking about the very sick woman’s health as a lie to avoid testimony, Fox and the usual haters appeared to be doing their usual throwing dung against the wall to see what might stick on Hillary well ahead of 2016. (Lord, didn’t we just finish with one election and the news media’s already obsessing over 2016 election?)
When it comes to hating and character assassination, Fox Nation will still bomb people’s character to shreds when the truth will do.
And, I must say as well, in the interest of, uh, fair and balanced blogging:
I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton suffered some real emotional pain and sleepless nights over this whole god-awful tragedy–don’t forget that the embassy ambassador who was killed (who wasn’t one to sit in the embassy and who, daily, wandered around his territory a lot and with precious little security that he felt was not necessary) was a Democrat and old friend of the Clintons.
But as for Hillary Clinton and our leaders and their underlings now and in all times–on both sides and all sides–they just never seem to get this:
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