Accountability Review Board's findings on Benghazi: No one Accountable

The 'Independent' Accountability Review Board (ARB) - established by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to investigate the attack in Benghazi on 9/11/12 - has reached at least one bizarre conclusion in its unclassified report. That conclusion appears to run counter to what Clinton herself said approximately two months earlier when asked about the State Department's role in preventing the attack.

"I take responsibility. I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. " - Hillary Clinton on Benghazi attack, 10/15/12

"...the Board did not find reasonable cause to determine that any individual U.S. government employee breached his or her duty." - Accountability Review Board on Benghazi attack, 12/18/12

"I'll take responsibility but it's not my fault" - unknown

Yes,  it's ridiculously oxymoronic and Orwellian to consider that the 'Accountability' Review Board would investigate something for two months and ultimately determine that no one person is accountable in the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Adding to the sick irony is the quote placed at the very top of the report:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Based on the conclusion of the ARB - that no one is accountable - it is the ARB itself that seems not to have grokked that lesson. Perhaps a better quote to headline the report with would be:

"The buck stops here."

If the ARB had any interest in being true to its moniker, it would have agreed with the person who established the ARB and concluded that Hillary was ultimately responsible, and therefore accountable. Then again, when the person who establishes the ARB is the one who wants responsibility without accountability, we have a bit of a predictable report.

As for history repeating itself, holding no one single individual in the State Department's massive bureaucracy accountable does at least one thing; it reinforces bureaucrats' belief in more bureaucracy because it protects them all from accountability. It is the friend of each individual in it.

The ARB is the entity that has not learned from history and is repeating it.

It should also be clarified that no one individual on the ARB will be held accountable for failing to learn this lesson.

Well, at least the bureaucracy was held accountable.

That's ok, it can take it.