Catwho wrote:
I always thought the "what does it matter!" was more along the lines of "It's not that 'someone' attacked the embassy, it's that 'the embassy was attacked' period." The who, to her, was less important than the security failures that led to the attack in the first place. Doesn't matter if it's ISIL, Al Qaida, or Jimmy's Gang of Suicidal 12 Year Olds. Someone within the intelligence agency should have caught a whiff of the attack, but it blindsided everyone.
Except that her comment was not about "who" attacked our embassy but "why" the attack happened.
In the aftermath of an event like this, one of the key actions to take is to determine why the event occurred, so you can make adjustments to prevent similar such events in the future. By saying that it didn't matter, Clinton was basically saying that one of the primary functions of the State Department (and the hearings resulting from the Benghazi attack) didn't really matter. Her job didn't matter, basically. Which was a pretty stunning admission.
Imagine someone whose job is to deal with racial inequality in the US justice system saying "why does it matter why black people are imprisoned more than white folks?", or someone in education saying "why does it matter why some students drop out of school?", or a car manufacturer saying "why does it matter why those brakes failed?". That's the equivalent of what she said as Secretary of State. She's supposed to have been running the department that figures out what is going on around the world and makes recommendations and takes actions to account for them, and she doesn't think it matters why one of our embassy's was attacked? That's a monumental failure to grasp the job she was appointed to do, even if one ignores the political aspects of the issue as a whole.
And yes, the whole thing was made all the more infuriating because the "why" was quite obviously manipulated by the White House in order to deflect criticism of Obama's foreign policy during the election. If the attack occurred because of a protest over a video that got out of hand, then the policy isn't to blame, it's all about hate speech instead. So there was a huge motivation to change the perception of "why" the attack occurred. One could also turn Clinton's question around: If it really didn't matter, then why did a white house staffer remove the section of the original draft of the intelligence report that talked about Al-Queda related groups in the area and insert a section about protests arising from a video? Clearly, it mattered a great deal to someone in the Obama Administration that people think the "why" was about a video.
Quote:
Turns out the initial "revenge for that really stupid movie some dumb **** American made" was partially true, too. I don't see anyone apologizing to Susan Rice.
Huh? You have a cite for this? I have not heard anything to suggest that the facts regarding this have changed.
Edited, Sep 29th 2014 7:05pm by gbaji