Hillary Clinton Takes Defiant Tone On Benghazi In New Book
In her upcoming book, Hillary Clinton strikes a defiant tone against conservative's continued interest in the Benghazi attack.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new book is only weeks away from release and, inevitably, pretty much everyone is viewing it as the opening for an expected run for President in 2016. Already, Clinton has booked media appearances to promote the book with Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts on ABC and, somewhat surprisingly, on Fox News Channel later this month. There are plenty of topics that the book is likely to address that will make for interesting political fodder, no doubt, but perhaps none will be more combed over than her discussion of the attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, its aftermath, and the political controversy that has grown up around it in the years since then. Today, Politico is out with an exclusive look at the 34 page chapter in the book where Clinton discusses what may have been the darkest day in her tenure at Foggy Bottom:
Hillary Clinton offers a detailed account of the deadly attack on the American embassy in Benghazi — and a pointed rebuttal to Republican critics who’ve laced into her over the incident — in a much-anticipated chapter of her forthcoming book, “Hard Choices,” obtained by POLITICO.
“Those who exploit this tragedy over and over as a political tool minimize the sacrifice of those who served our country,” Clinton writes in the gripping chapter, “Benghazi: Under Attack.”
Casting doubt on the motivations of congressional Republicans who have continued to investigate the attacks, including with an upcoming House select committee, Clinton continues: “I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It’s just plain wrong, and it’s unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me.”
The 34-page chapter is Clinton’s most complete account to date of the attack and its aftermath. Her tone is less defensive than defiant: Clinton takes responsibility for the “horror” of the loss of life in Benghazi, but puts it in the context of “the heartbreaking human stakes of every decision we make” — and she accuses adversaries of manipulating a tragedy for partisan gain.
There has been, she writes, a “regrettable amount of misinformation, speculation, and flat-out deceit by some in politics and the media,” but new information from “a number of reputable sources continues to expand our understanding of these events.”
The chapter appears intended, in part, to give Democrats a clear framework to respond to Republicans who have raised questions about Clinton’s role and what the Obama administration has said about the Sept. 11, 2012, killing of four Americans. The section was obtained and reviewed by POLITICO on the eve of a meeting in which members of Democratic-leaning groups will be briefed by Clinton’s team about how she addresses the attacks in the book.
(…)
The chapter is a mostly chronological retrospective of the attack interspersed with Clinton’s views. She points out that she ordered an investigation into what happened nine days after the attacks, and that she agreed with and implemented all 29 of the recommendations made by a review board.
While saying that as a former senator she respects the “oversight role that Congress is meant to play,” Clinton later adds, “Many of these same people are a broken record about unanswered questions. But there is a difference between unanswered questions and unlistened to answers.”
Clinton defends the intelligence at the time preceding the attack on the American compound in Benghazi. An anti-Islamic video that had sparked a protest at an embassy in Cairo was proved in “later investigation and reporting,” including by The New York Times, to have been “indeed a factor” in what happened in Benghazi, Clinton writes.
That point is among those that has been debated during hearings into the attacks.
“There were scores of attackers that night, almost certainly with differing motives,” she writes. “It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video. It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were. Both assertions defy not only the evidence but logic as well.”
Clinton addresses lingering questions about how military assets were deployed to try to rescue personnel at the besieged compound, writing that Obama “gave the order to do whatever was necessary to support our people in Libya. It was imperative that all possible resources be mobilized immediately. … When Americans are under fire, that is not an order the Commander in Chief has to give twice. Our military does everything humanly possible to save American lives — and would do more if they could. That anyone has ever suggested otherwise is something I will never understand.”
Clinton also highlights some of the findings of an Accountability Review Board investigation into the attacks, including that there had been security upgrades to the Benghazi compound but that they were “simply inadequate in an increasingly dangerous city.” She notes that Benghazi compound personnel told the review board that they felt their requests for additional security were not given adequate weight by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, a point Republicans have in the past argued does not absolve Clinton since those officials report to the secretary of state.
Clinton reiterates a point she made during congressional testimony last year: that she never saw cables requesting additional security. The cables were addressed to her as a “procedural quirk” given her position, but didn’t actually land on her desk, she writes: “That’s not how it works. It shouldn’t. And it didn’t.”
Clinton addresses claims that the investigation of the attack was rigged since she appointed some of the Accountability Review Board members and she was not interviewed. The board, she writes, “had unfettered access to anyone and anything they thought relevant to their investigation, including me if they had chosen to do so.”
She defends then-Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for describing the Benghazi attack as a “copycat’ of the video-spurred Cairo protests when she appeared on Sunday TV shows days later. Rice, Clinton writes, was relying on existing intelligence. The talking points she used were written to help members of Congress address the attacks, and the information began with and was signed off on by CIA officials. Intelligence officials didn’t know Rice would use them, Clinton writes.
The talking points have been a focus of Republican critics, who insist they stemmed from the White House as an effort to control a politically sensitive issue — a terrorist attack on the eve of Obama’s reelection.
“Susan stated what the intelligence community believed, rightly or wrongly, at the time,” Clinton writes. “That was the best she or anyone could do. Every step of the way, whenever something new was learned, it was quickly shared with Congress and the American people. There is a difference between getting something wrong, and committing wrong. A big difference that some have blurred to the point of casting those who made a mistake as intentionally deceitful.”
As the article notes, Clinton tones in the chapter, which has not actually been released to the public yet, are obviously far more defiant than defensive in response to what conservatives claim to be the unanswered questions regarding the Bengazi attack and its aftermath. In this respect, she is mirroring her tone in the House and Senate committee hearings she appeared before shortly before she left the State Department last year, as well as the attitude that Congressional and Senate Democrats have taken in recent months regarding the issue. This attitude on Capitol Hill had become so dismissive that, at least initially, there were those who wondered if Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would even bother to name Democratic members to the House Select Committee recently established by the House GOP. In the end, Pelosi ended up appointing five members to the Committee led by senior House Democrat Elijah Cummings, which was a smart political decision because the alternative would have been to cede the entire stage of the committee hearings to the Republicans. In naming those members, though, it was clear that House Democrats were doing so as much with the mission of discrediting the hearings as anything else. That appears to be the same tactic that Clinton intends to utilize as she heads out into the public arena and, inevitably, faces more questions about Benghazi and other issues.
None of this is likely to quell Clinton’s critics, those who have latched on to Benghazi as the supposed key to defeating Democrats in 2014 or 2016, and the Members of Congress who likely see pushing the questions on Benghazi as a way of enhancing their own political careers. Even accepting Clinton’s contention that the supposedly unanswered questions have already been answered, and leaving aside some of the unanswered questions that the Select Committee will likely never actually address because they aren’t politically “sexy,” it is rather obvious what the primary purpose of the renewed Congressional interest in Benghazi is really all about. There’s an election coming up in November, and another one coming up in 2016 in which Hillary Clinton herself seems likely to be the candidate of the Democratic Party. Virtually from the moment that it happened, Republicans have believed that the Benghazi attacks were some kind of silver bullet they could use against their opposition that would bring everything crumbing down. Indeed, some of have gone so far as to suggest that it should lead to impeachment if the facts justify that outcome. More importantly, a perusal of conservative media on the issue shows that, at least on the right, the issue still has the same resonance it had some twenty months ago when the attack occurred. It’s unlikely that anything Hillary Clinton writes in her book on the subject is going to bring an end to that. So, Republicans will push forward on this issue, and the Select Committee will likely continue holding hearings well into 2016 (and if the GOP takes the Senate, you’ll be sure to see a parallel investigation there if not a Joint Select Committee.)
In the end, though, it’s unclear how much of this is going to matter. I argued earlier this month that the issue of Benghazi is not going to go away for Hillary Clinton if she runs for President and I think that remains to be the case. It will come up in interviews, in debates, and in the arguments made by the candidates running against her and the groups that support them. That’s one reason why this portion of her book, which is arguably a preview of how she will respond to the issue on the campaign trail, is so important. The question, of course, is whether any of this will matter politically. Recent polling has indicated that the public does support the creation of the Benghazi Select Committee. At the same time, though, there is no evidence in the polls that the issue is harming public perception of either President Obama or Hillary Clinton, or that it is an issue that will have a large impact in either in 2014 or 2016. Indeed, for the most part, what the polls really indicate is that the public hasn’t paid all that much attention to Benghazi and doesn’t really care very much about it. It’s possible that something will happen in the upcoming hearings that will change that, but quite honestly it seems unlikely. Even if it does, though, it strikes me that the kind of response that Clinton is laying out in her book when it comes to Benghazi is likely going to go over well with a public that, in the end, is going to care more about their pocket books than they are about something that happened in North Africa on a day that will be four years in the past by the time voters go to the polls in November 2016.
Bottom line is, the people who care about Benghazi are never in a million years going to vote for Hillary anyway.
Cue the Jenos swamp-fever rage in…3…2…1…
I’m more concerned with the fact that she has no real accomplishments as Secretary of State or Senator. I feel like you are basically voting for Bill again which honestly is not the worst thing that could happen after our last 2 presidents.
@Doug:
This will only matter insofar as one side or the other gets increased turnout at the polls. If we’re in a status quo mode then it does not matter at all – people have taken sides and no minds are going to be changed with respect to Benghazi.
We’ve probably investigated Benghazi more than we investigated the 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon that cost 240 American military lives, or the year 2000 terror attack on the USS Cole that cost 17 American military lives.
It is clear that the latest Republican-sponsored Benghazi round is all about keeping the Impeach Obama and/or Hate Hillary dream alive.
She knows this will sink her chances.
This is the tone of someone who is toast, and knows it.
Obama blamed the video because the video was to blame. There was and is plenty of evidence to support this claim, and virtually no evidence to contradict this claim. The role of the video in the Benghazi attack was clear at the time, and it’s even more clear now. The right-wing claim that “the video had nothing to do with it,” said in those exact words by John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol and many others, is a classic example of a Big Lie. Many people do not understand this even though the evidence is overwhelming and clear. Link.
Mischaracterizing the Rhodes email is another Big Lie. The original CIA memo said this (pdf; 9/14/12, 11:15 am):
“The protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” is an obvious reference to the video, because those protests were undoubtedly about the video. The video caused riots in about 30 countries, causing about 30 deaths. The Cairo events were part of this wave of outrage.
The Rhodes email said this (pdf, 9/14/12, 8:09 pm):
The key words in both documents (“were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo”) are 100% identical. And unless you believe in time travel, those words originated with CIA, not Rhodes.
The Rhodes email shows that the White House expected Rice to tell the truth: that the video was to blame. She said that because it’s true. And the original CIA memo said essentially the same thing.
The GOP narrative relies entirely on a simple and glaring fallacy. The heart of the GOP argument is this: ‘they knew right away that it was a terrorist attack, so it was wrong to blame the video.’ This is a nice example of the fallacy of bifurcation. The two things they are treating as mutually exclusive are not mutually exclusive.
Both things are true: it was terrorism, and the motivation was the video; these two things are not mutually exclusive. The GOP narrative is built on this incredibly stupid idea: that a terrorist attack could not possibly be motivated by an anti-Muslim video. That’s nonsense, and a terrorist attack motivated by the video is precisely what happened. And that’s also what Obama et al told us at the time (or, at worst, soon after): that it was terrorism, and that the video was the motivation.
Oddly enough, this fallacy are not just at the heart of the GOP narrative. This fallacy is also embodied in most mainstream coverage of this story. That darn liberal media.
My apologies to those who have seen this before.
Our wonderful system of government has morphed into tribal warfare. I guess it’s really been that way since the civil war but it has become more intense the last few years making the government dysfunctional. Most of our local government offices here in Oregon are non-partisan and that seems to work pretty well. I believe it was John Adams who warned us about the danger of tribal political parties in the very beginning.
@ Florack
Says the man who flat out said, “Obama can’t win”, and the man who predicted “A Democrat civil war, worse than Chicago” at the 2008 Democratic convention. Also the guy who assured us McCain was riding a late surge to victory in the closing days of the 2008 race, based on “special inside information most people don’t have access to” (this special insider dope tuned out to be McCain press releases)
@Ron Beasley: Was just reading Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech yesterday, and he mentions how the Dixiecrats who are filibustering civil rights legislation are Democrats*, and that there isn’t an inch of difference between the two. He goes on about how they’re not willing to shed these people because they require them to maintain power. Gosh, hindsight is a bitch sometimes.
* This was April of ’64, roughly three months before Civil Rights Act passed.
@Eric Florack:
There are a couple levels of fail here.
a) There is no possible way that you know what she’s thinking, so anything after “she knows” is, at best, a guess and, more likely, a projection of your own thinking.
b) Benghazi will sink Hillary’s chances? With who? With Republicans, who weren’t going to vote for her anyway? For liberals, who take a more charitable view of her actions? With the great “independent” middle who, as Doug points out, will be more interested in current 2016 events in 2016 than making up for Mitt Romney’s incompetent ’12 campaigning.
To repeat something I’ve said before: “Benghazi only hurts. It never helps.”
Wise words for anyone thinking Benghazi is going to lead them to political fortune and glory.
Here’s some information for folks who are not familiar with Florack’s remarkable record in this regard. Recall what he said on 10/21/12:
And also what he told us a couple of days before Obama was elected (the first time): that he would lose and there would be “rioting in Grant park.”
I’m looking forward to his future predictions, so I’ll know that I should bet the other way.
What the Benghazi circus has done is to convince the Republican base that Obama & Hillary deliberately withheld assets that could have saved the lives of the 4 men killed.
Why they would do this is a mystery to me but I’ve seen this “fact” stated over and over on right wing commentaries and blogs…so from the standpoint of throwing red meat to the rabble it’s been a smashing success.
Of course she has to go on Fox News. She has to know (or learn) how to handle them. Sure it is risky but she is running for President. We shouldn’t expect anything less.
@Eric Florack:
Especially after it cost Obama the 2012 election to President Romney (if, that is, you look at the unskewed election results).
You have to love right wing predictions. I still remember Jan telling us that 2013 was going to be a terrible year for investors & to get out while the getting was good.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!
Keep deluding yourself, sweetie…if for nothing else, you are at least good for comic relief…
apparently my comment got caught in the spam filter.
set me free!!!!!!
@C. Clavin: Mine too. Help!!!!
@anjin-san:
At least Jan had the good sense to skulk off to whence she came.
Florack…not so strong in the good sense department.
@beth: Bottom line is, the people who care about
Benghazifour assassinated Americans are never in a million years going to vote for Hillary anyway.You’re welcome for the correction.
But they were four white men and government employees, so that mitigates it a bit, right?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
So you are saying you care so damn much because they were white, and if they were of color not so much?
Thanks for confirming suspicions.
@ Jenos Idanian #13
You silence about the many who were killed and wounded in attacks on US diplomatic missions under Bush is noted.
You get as much political mileage out of those Benghazi corpses as possible, eh?
@MikeSJ:
IT may be politics as usual, but It might have something to do with the fact the woman is a pathological liar.
Does she talk about the Bosnia sniper story in the book? I’m still moved by her courage in that situation. He’s a refresher from the 2008 primary.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2008/03/the_tall_tale_of_tuzla.html
@anjin-san: You silence about the many who were killed and wounded in attacks on US diplomatic missions under Bush is noted.
I don’t recall any of those attacks instituting a full panic at the Bush White House, including cooking up a cover story that fell apart within days. I also don’t recall any Ambassadors — the personal representatives of the United States — in that category.
@Jenos Idanian #13: What was the cover story that fell apart after a few days?
@ Jenos
I’m fairly sure you don’t recall anything about them at all. The right wing media did not make multi-year efforts to create phony scandals out of them. When a Republican is in the White House, the RWM always responds to a crisis by saying, more or less, “this is a time for all Americans to pull together behind the President and set politics aside.” With Obama in office, the long, long tradition of American pulling together in a crisis is DOA. That’s modern conservatism – politics before country, party before country.
Is there any actual evidence of that happening in the Obama White House? And by evidence, I don’t mean “blonde babes in really short skirts on Fox keep saying so.”
So what? An American citizen is an American citizen. I don’t value an ambassadors life any more than the life on an embassy janitor. And I say that knowing that Stevens was a good guy and a dedicated public servant who grew up not far down the road from me. He was also a Cal Berkeley/Hastings man. In my family, that is very close to home indeed.
She is a LIAR. They cooked up a story, to blame it on a video and then lied to make a coverup.
The operative words are LIAR and COVERUP
@anjin-san:“blonde babes in really short skirts on Fox keep saying so.”????
I believe the correct words for this misanthrope is sexist pig.
@ John425
Well, that’s about what I would expect from you. Fox paying attractive, intelligent women to pretend to be attractive, not terribly intelligent women does not bother you? Nor the de rigueur micro mini-skirts?
How about the real Gretchen Carlson?
What exactly is sexist about pointing out that the blonde babes in short skirts that Fox trots out, are… blonde babes in short skirts?
Proof?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
That’s a great point. This is as great a scandal as when Gerald Ford’s Ambassador to Lebanon Francis Meloy was kidnapped and killed by Palestinian terrorists in 1976 , or when Richard Nixon’s Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel was murdered in 1973 after Black September stormed the Khartoum embassy….
Wait, what’s that you say? Those weren’t, in fact, great scandals? You’ve never even heard of those men or those incidents before? This wasn’t big news? These attacks weren’t followed by years of Congressional finger-pointing and fevered speculation by Democrats that Ford and Nixon were somehow to blame for the murders? They were just considered tragic but foreseeable and bearable risks of doing business in dangerous parts of the world?
But then what, what, makes the murder of an ambassador when Ford or Nixon was president a non-scandal, but the murder of an ambassador when Obama is president the Greatest National Disaster Since The Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?
Hmmmm…..
@Rafer Janders:
In fact, in the twelve years from 1968 to 1979 five separate US ambassadors were murdered in the line of duty. Was this considered a grave scandal? Was it front page news day after day? Is it still inscribed in American history books and taught to this day?
No, no and no.
Obama and Clinton blamed the video because the video was to blame. Link. The liar is you.
Jenos:
What “fell apart” is your claim that there was “a cover story that fell apart.” Obama and Clinton blamed the video because the video was to blame. Link.
“My apologies to those who have seen this before. ” Yes junkie we are sick and tired of hearing your lies.
The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by Jamaa Islamiya, a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman.
The protest was planned by Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, said Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012/09/12/deadly-embassy-attacks-were-days-in-the-making/57752828/1
Several al Qaeda-linked jihadists helped incite the protest outside the US embassy in Cairo on Sept. 11. The jihadists include senior members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), a group that merged with al Qaeda, and a senior Gamaa Islamiyya (IG) leader who has longstanding ties to al Qaeda’s senior leadership.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/10/al_qaeda-linked_jiha.php##ixzz33IKGC3VA
Al-Masry Al-Youm reportedly obtained a copy of the September 4 letter, sent to all Egyptian security sectors, warning that Sinai- and Gaza-based Global Jihad cells were planning attacks on the two embassies.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Egypt-intelligence-warns-of-attacks-on-Israel-US-embassies
So a sept. 4 warning about the upcoming attack….and the scrubbing of the words warning from the talking points? ……“Allahu akbar?” That’s Arabic for “Nothing to see here”.
Those riots were about the video. Link, link.
Read Morell’s testimony.
@jukeboxgrad:
Not only that but right here on OTB we had a near realtime argument during the siege of the Cairo embassy, and before the Benghazi incident. What sticks in my mind is the criticism of embassy personnel from OTB voices with respect to embassy personnel’s alleged failure to stand up for the Coptic guy’s video.
rudderpedals:
Interesting observation. I didn’t remember, but your comment inspired me to go find exactly what you’re talking about (link):
And notice what Doug said on 9/12/12 (link):
The false claim that “the video had nothing to do with it” is something right-wingers thought of much later. It’s certainly not what they were saying at the time.
But notice how Doug (“a film that they had never actually seen”) was already trying to obfuscate the fact that the video was shown on Egypt TV on 9/8 and seen by millions. Sweeping that key fact under the rug is a key part of the right-wing narrative.
@John425:
Well as usual you are wrong.
The video was part of the cause…and to date…after 10 congressional investigations there is zero evidence of a cover- up.
Confronted with facts…can you change your mind?
Vegas has the odds on that at 1M to 1.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
What panic?
And what cover-up? 10 Congressional investigations have found zero evidence of a cover-up.
You’re living in delusion.
You ran away and hid before because Benghazi made you a fool. Why come back for more ???
@John425:
How so? Many are blondes, and many wear short skirts. Seems like a statement of fact, and not the rantings of a misanthrope like say, Sarah Palin or Steve King.
I was really looking forward to more from Jenos about how the death of Ambassador Stevens was a unique event in American history. Guess he has taken his playthings and moved on.
@anjin-san: Moved on? Nah, just got bored with the BS.
I was waiting for you to actually say something of substance on the gun thread.
And I gave you hashtags for your favorite diversions on the Shinseki thread.
Here? You and your fellow gang of idiots have decided that the assassination of Americans by Muslims is best handled as another excuse to mock me and others, and I really don’t feel overly inclined to help you in your necrophilia. Although it is almost amusing how you tend to couple that with revels in your alleged intellectual and moral superiority…
One final point: Obama vowed to bring the killers to justice. Two years later, the media knows who they are and where to find them…
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Wow, that is a remarkably puerile observation.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Slander! That’s a filthy lie!
We don’t need any excuse to mock you….
@ Jenos
Let’s face it dude – some guys are “sponge-worthy”, you are “mock-worthy.”
We all have to play the cards that are dealt us…