[Vision2020] Benghazi: Hillary Cleared of All Charges

[Nicholas Gier]

Good Morning Visionaries:

For those who do not take the DNews see below for my most recent column.
It has already appeared in the Sandpoint Reader, the Idaho State Journal,
and the Los Cabos Daily News.

Clinton's very poor judgement about her private email server stands in
stark contrast to relatively competent response to the Benghazi tragedy.

The state polls are holding steady for a major electoral win of at least
334 votes.

nfg

*                                 Benghazi: Hillary Cleared of All Charges*

By Nick Gier

            The GOP House Select Committee on Benghazi has interviewed 100
witnesses, spent $7 million of its own funds, and has forced other agencies
to spend an additional $13 million. The Defense Department is at its wit’s
end and is rightly accusing the committee of making frivolous requests.
              Letters from Gen. Dana Chipman, the committee’s own former
chief counsel with 33 years’ military experience, have been now released.
In one to former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Chipman states: “I think
you ordered exactly the right forces to move out and to head toward a
position where they could reinforce what was occurring in Benghazi.”
Contrary to the right-wing press, there were no orders for those forces to
stand down.
            One of the most inflammatory charges made against Hillary
Clinton was that she dismissed the Benghazi deaths by saying “What
difference does it make”?  In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee (1/23/13), the gravity of this loss is clear: “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 that
they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it
make?”
            There is also the accusation by GOP Rep. Darrell Issa that
Clinton had “personally signed” a cable requesting reduced security in
Benghazi.  Fact checkers at the *Washington Post* awarded Issa four
Pinocchio’s (a Whopper) for this lie.  The fact is that every cable from
the State Department has the Secretary’s signature renders its author
unidentifiable.
            GOP Sen. Rand Paul charged that Clinton “was asked repeatedly
to provide security in Benghazi on several occasions, including direct
cables.
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/22/rand-paul/rand-paul-says-hillary-clinton-was-asked-repeatedl/>”
Investigators at Politifact have judged this claim “mostly false.” They
state that “no one has shown Clinton willfully ignored the cries for help
from Libya. Paul’s office didn’t provide evidence linking requests for
security directly to Clinton.” All cables to the State Department cables
are addressed to “SECSTATE” in “WASHDC,” but only a select few ever reach
the secretary.
            On the October 15, 2012, Fox New’s Sean Hannity claimed that
“somebody at the State Department was watching the attack in real time” via
video, and therefore should have known exactly what was happening.
           First, there was of course no live video feed from Libya to any
government office; and second, Hannity may have misunderstood Charles
Lamb’s testimony that Clinton was in telephone contact with state
department officials in Libya as if it were “almost in real time.”
              Clinton’s critics apparently did not realize that this claim
of real time contact contradicts their accusation that Clinton and Obama
were “unaccounted for” during and after the attack. Instead of being
asleep—Trump’s libelous charge—Clinton in constant telephone contact with
the deputy chief of mission in Libya, but she was also speaking directly
with national security advisor Tom Donilon, President Obama, and other
administration officials.
           With regard to the cause of the attack, UN Ambassador Susan Rice
has been rightly criticized for blaming it on an anti-Islamic video that
caused protests in Egypt but not Benghazi.  From the very beginning,
however, Clinton was sure it was a terrorist attack.
           On the day after the attack, September 12, 2012, she called the
Egyptian prime minister stating that “we know it had nothing to do with the
film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.” On September 21,2012,
Clinton declared: “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we
will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the
terrorists who murdered four Americans.”
           Critics have charged that at a ceremony honoring the Benghazi
victims, Clinton told their family members that the video caused the
attack. But Jan Stevens, father of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Cheryl Bennet,
Tyrone Wood’s mother, and Barbara Doherty, Glen Doherty’s mother, each said
that Clinton did not mention the video in conversations with them.  Only
Charles Wood, Tyrone Wood’s father, recalled that Clinton referred to the
video.
            Allegations that Clinton ordered the “scrubbing” of Benghazi
documents, that she blocked a whistle blower from coming forward, that she
was silent about Benghazi attack for weeks, and that she did not take
responsibility for the attacks have all been found to be false.
           When she was Secretary of State Clinton’s approval ratings were
70 percent, but the fact that they are now at 45 percent is primarily due
to this dark cloud of lies hanging over her head.
            Nick Gier of Moscow taught philosophy at the University of
Idaho for 31 years.  Read all of his columns on the 2016 election at
www.NickGier.com/Election2016.pdf

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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