Late this afternoon, Elise Labott of CNN reported that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told her that she “takes responsibility” for security problems at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, resulting in the murder of our ambassador and three other Americans. Clinton, who is hiding out in Peru while this blows over, took to the microphone to throw herself on the sword. She said “the buck stopped with her” when it came to the embassy, according to Labott. Labott further reported that Clinton stated, “she didn’t want to play any kind of blame game or political gotcha. She understands that the election is coming up and everyone wants to politicize this … She wants to wait for an investigation.” According to Labott, however, Clinton also blamed Congress, as well as other members of government.
Hillary is clearly playing the good soldier on the eve of the crucial second presidential debate between her boss, President Obama, and challenger Mitt Romney. After Vice President Joe Biden threw Clinton under the bus during the vice presidential debate, stating that neither he nor President Obama knew anything about the security situation in Benghazi, Hillary stepped out to the front to take the hit.
There’s a dual purpose for this sudden mea culpa. The first is obvious: Obama wants to end all speculation about his role in the Libyan disaster, and Hillary believes that she can take the hit and keep on
If Secretary of State Clinton was responsible for the security situation in Benghazi – as, indeed, we argued she was on the day after the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens – here’s the question, however: was she acting outside the scope of her duties when she failed to provide the ambassador the security he requested? Or was she following the orders of a President who has always attempted to avoid making waves in the Middle East, and saw a
The answer seems obvious: Clinton was acting in accordance with President Obama’s general foreign policy. She did not provide Stevens with proper security because she was not supposed to under general Obama foreign policy guidelines. That’s why the Obama administration has spent over a month trying to claim that the obvious terrorist attack in Libya was sparked by a protest; then they blamed intelligence; then they blamed the State Department. The Obama administration never came clean because the State Department was acting under color of authority.
That, at least, must be the supposition pending a full investigation. This scandal will not end merely because the Obama administration has convinced Hillary to take a bullet for President Obama, and in doing so, shore up his female support. President Obama is the person who put Secretary of State Clinton in the unenviable position of enacting a pusillanimous foreign policy. If he didn’t, he should fire her forthwith. If he did, no phony sackcloth and ashes from the Secretary of State will solve the underlying problem: a cowardly Commander in Chief who leads from behind and leaves our people in harm’s way, then throws others under the bus for his failures of leadership.
UPDATE: CNN has now released snippets of video from Clinton. In the video, she says she takes responsibility -- then promptly announces that security arrangements were made by "security professionals." In other words, she took responsibility, then blamed subordinates. Watch for the media to ignore that walkback on responsibility so that they can attempt to quash this scandal.
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