<div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">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.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">Clinton's very poor judgement about her private email server stands in stark contrast to relatively competent response to the Benghazi tragedy.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">The state polls are holding steady for a major electoral win of at least 334 votes.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">nfg<br clear="all"></font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><b style="line-height:150%;text-align:center"><span style="line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif"> Benghazi:
Hillary Cleared of All Charges</font></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:15pt;text-align:center;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif">By Nick Gier</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:15pt;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%"> 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.<br clear="all">
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.<br clear="all">
<span style="color:black"> 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: </span></span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">“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?”<br clear="all">
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 <i>Washington Post</i>
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.<br clear="all">
GOP Sen. Rand Paul charged
that</span><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/22/rand-paul/rand-paul-says-hillary-clinton-was-asked-repeatedl/"><span style="line-height:150%;color:windowtext;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in;text-decoration:none;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"> Clinton
“was asked repeatedly to provide security in Benghazi on several occasions,
including direct cables.</span></a><span style="line-height:150%">” 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.<br clear="all">
</span><span style="line-height:150%">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. <br clear="all">
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.” <br clear="all">
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.<br clear="all">
</span><span style="line-height:150%"> 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. <br clear="all">
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.”<br clear="all">
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.<br clear="all">
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. <br clear="all">
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.<br clear="all"></span></font></p><div><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%"> </span><span style="line-height:150%">Nick Gier of Moscow taught
philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.</span><span style="line-height:150%"> </span><span style="line-height:150%">Read all of his columns on the 2016 election
at <a href="http://www.NickGier.com/Election2016.pdf">www.NickGier.com/Election2016.pdf</a></span> <br></font><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“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.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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