Hillary Speaks

Finally our Secretary of State showed up for the Congressional hearings on Benghazi. I was not sure what to expect from the 5-hour session. Neither Clinton is friendly with the truth. Bill and Hillary aren't even honest with each other, so I didn't exactly expect her to be honest with the American people. 

She did say that she takes responsibility (in terms of the-buck-stops-here), but then she dodged each question that would have called for her to actually take responsibility. As I listened to her answers, I thought I was hearing the slippery answers of a teenager. I do however think she was sincere when she recalled greeting the families and the caskets. 

I am confused about something she said. When she said that the State Department received 1.4 million letters/cables/communications per year and they are all addressed to her, I could understand that. But what is the hierarchy? If a message comes from an ambassador to the Secretary of State, would that be a higher priority than a message from an underling? And doesn't she have staff that read, prioritize, and summarize communiques for her? Wouldn't she receive daily briefings about developing situations that would have alerted her to the problems in the region in the prior months? There are still too many answered questions. 

The rant was surprising to me. She is not prone to outbursts. I guess she thinks that it's not that important how the attack happened, but that the attack happened. I disagree. If my teenager takes my car and then calls to tell me it's totaled, I want to know how. All the more important to know how the attack happened and how these Americans were killed so as to not have it happen again. There is something to be learned here. Policies or procedures were either not followed or need to be reviewed. Communication channels were either broken or something serious is wrong. I would like to think that Mrs. Clinton did not know about the problem ahead of time, but that means that she was not properly informed. If Mrs. Clinton knew of the problem and did nothing, that is a serious issue. Whether she knew or whether no one told her, both are failings. And both need fixed.

The other discouraging thing to me is that most people don't really care and aren't paying attention. They will only hear her testimony when it's a sound bite in a 2016 commercial in her run for president.