*

*
Michael Evans, painter of light - full frame

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Let the chips fall where they may

I pride myself on calling balls and strikes fairly from either side of the plate. Check my early posts on Benghazi here, here and here. Even here. It was obvious from the get go that the State Department and the administration were trying to peddle a bucket of shit. I don't care what the CIA guy said, there was a reason Susan Rice wanted to project the idea that the Libyan violence was not an orchestrated terrorist attack but instead a spontaneous eruption. Because we were trying to consolidate hard fought political gains and this fit the narrative better. "They love us so much."

The Republicans and Issa's committee are clearly using the Benghazi hearings to inflict as much harm as they can get to stick to the administration and maybe further down the road, Hillary's election chances.

That being said, I think that it is important that we hear from the whistleblowers. When Mr. Hicks says that he was demoted to a crappy desk job for not adopting the company line, I believe him. Of course the military brass said that the Special Ops aid he requested would never arrive in time. We talked about the matter at coffee and one of the guys, an ex captain said, "Did you ever know a general or admiral that was not a politician?" Maybe Ken actually said it, don't know his old rank.

Of course a lot of what the Republicans are alleging doesn't hold water either. Clinton's name is on every cable, that is the way it always works at State, there is no evidence that she was in on anything. Mostly what we get from the administration is that working in the foreign service is a dangerous job and these courageous men and women knew what they were in for and accepted the inherent risks. But somebody was asleep at the wheel. It didn't have to go down like this.

Of course if the security detail was not allowed access to bullets or the people back home stopped paying the help and you were letting the station run on fumes and not granting repeated requests to bolster security, well that would not be a good thing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

After eight years of a Republican Administration and billions of dollars spent on a war that never caught Bin Laden and another war that produced no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, prolonged by Geo. W.'s lies, the Republicans have a lot of nerve pointing fingers at Benghazi. Issa, Karl Rove and all the GOP are only stirring a political pot aimed at elections.
Aiding Syria with weapons is simply Lindsay Grahams backdoor dealing with South Carolina lobbyist to sell weapons. Freedom in North Africa is all about oil.

Blue Heron said...

Syria seems like a very bad idea. Agreed. We have no horse in the race and the Russians are up against it. Long drawn out civil war might be the best possible solution.Do we want an Iranian proxy or an Al Qaeda proxy. I forget?