Monday, September 24, 2012

Ambassador's Diary pitting CNN vs. Hillary Clinton?

The contents of a seven-page diary penned by Libyan Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens belies the narrative coming from the Obama administration, that the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi was not a terrorist attack and that there was no intelligence to that effect beforehand. We know this because CNN came into possession of that diary and reported about its contents.

This has apparently caused a bit of a riff between Secretary of State Clinton and the liberal cable network.

Via Buzzfeed:
“Perhaps the real question here,” CNN responded to the State Department criticism, “Is why is the State Department now attacking the messenger.”

That is the real question, and State Department’s bizarre criticism of CNN gives clues to the answer. Foggy Bottom is now in full-on damage control mode, with the primary goal of keeping Hillary Clinton’s legacy in Libya — and in Washington — intact.
We're also looking at the possibility of Hillary taking the fall for the attack according to a former State Department official:
...in reality, the fiasco appears to be largely — if not entirely — a State Department botch. It was the State Department that failed to provide its ambassador adequate security; it was the State Department that fled Benghazi in the aftermath of the attack, apparently failing to clear or secure the scene, leaving Stevens' diary behind; and it was State that had taken the lead on the ground after the Libya intervention.

“When it comes to specific critiques about the attack, if either [the White House or State] should be getting blamed, it seems to me the primary one to be getting blamed should be State itself more than the [White House],” says one former State Department official with extensive experience in the region. “I mean if you take away the 'buck stops here' parsing of this stuff, if Stevens was issuing warning or expressing concerns he was doing so primarily through his own chain of command. The security on the ground belongs to State.”
In light of these developments, isn't it about time to take another look at the letters from the Bachmann Five to various Inspectors General, including the one sent to the Deputy IG of the State Department that was the most controversial just a few months ago because it singled out Hillary's Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin for the latter's connections to the Muslim Brotherhood?

The Bachmann Five gave that Deputy IG for State a 90-day deadline to respond with a report. That deadline came and went two days after the Benghazi attack.

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