By: Craig Andresen and Diane Sori / Right Side Patriots on CPR Worldwide Media / www.cprworldwidemedia,net
members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi questioned former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while Democratic committee members apologized to her for her even having to be there.
Leading off with his opening statement, Committee Chair Trey Gowdy stated that, “This investigation is about four people who were killed representing our country on foreign soil. It is about what happened before, after and during the attacks that killed them. It is about what this country owes to those who risk their lives to serve it. And it is about the fundamental obligation for the government to tell the truth”…adding that even though many previous committees have investigated these attacks this current committee “goes much deeper in scope” and is far more comprehensive because “we now have her emails from the State Department to peruse.”
But in a deliberate at
tempt to counter Gowdy and make light of the all-important emails now coming into question, the leading Democrat on the committee, party-line tower Elijah Cummings, used his opening statement to say that Republicans, “are squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on this abusive effort to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign,” never mind that this investigation began years before Clinton officially announced her presidential run back in April of this year. And as the Democrats on the committee chimed in to also condemn the spending of some $4.7 million dollars, to date, on their investigation into Benghazi*, shows the utter ridiculousness of that line of faux contempt, as one need only look at what Congress spent on a few other things last year. Things such as spending $387,000 of the taxpayers money to study the effects robot-provided Swedish massage has on the physical recovery of rabbits after exercise, and $171,000 to teach monkeys to gamble in order to determine if monkeys, like humans, believe in the concept of a ‘hot hand.’
And those same liberals on that committee were part of the body that spent $80 million for the development of a real-life ‘Iron Man’ suit and $21 million for the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild buildings that continue to burn down because of their shoddy construction, not to mention their spending some $1 billion of taxpayer dollars to destroy some $16 billion of military grade ammo that wasn’t needed in the first place.
Those complaining endlessly, during the hearing that $4.7 million has been spent searching for the truth, including uncovering and looking at emails and documents no other committee so much as cared to see, and interviewing 41 witnesses, including 7 eye-witnesses to the actual attack in Benghazi, spent $120,000 in performance bonuses paid to an Environmental Protection Agency employee who admitted to viewing porn up to six hours a day on government computers. The shallowness of their argument, when contrasted to the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods was duly noted.
And body language in a hearing of this scope tells the story as well for you could not help but notice that when Hillary had to tell a lie to cover-up one of her many previous lies or got caught in a new lie by one of the committee members questioning her, that first she fidgeted, then she rested her chin in the palm of her hands and placed her elbows on the table as her eyes darted around refusing to focus on the committee panel…for she knew that she has just been outed. And by the way, the temporary face-lift tapes Hillary was obviously wearing do give way when one sweats, and Hillary’s face ‘dropped’ with every lie she told…until a break was called and the tapes were pulled back up again
And Hillary’s body language came into play during what we call smoking gun number 1, when Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) focused on Hillary’s email habits at the State Department, and placed a stack of papers on the desk…papers showing the 700 emails regarding Benghazi that were sent back-and-forth in 2011 before serious problems arose, but then placing next to them the miserly 67 emails that were exchanged between the mission and the State Department in 2012 when the situation was heating up. And Hillary’s response after she wiped away the look of shock on her face, was that she did not receive any classified material or that the material may have been classified retroactively on her email server. Saying that “Most of my work was not done on emails,” and that she “did not email during the day” except on rare occasions, because she was busy and did not have a computer in her office… became a statement that came back to haunt her later in her testimony.
Smoking gun number two involved the 684 email requests for additional security from Ambassador Stevens and others that Hillary claimed never reached her desk. Yet throughout the first round of questioning Hillary kept saying how close she and Ambassador Stevens were…how it was she who asked ‘Chris’…as she called him…to take the position…the very position that got him killed. And yet when Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KA) in trying to establish the ‘supposedly’ close relationship Hillary kept touting that she had with Ambassador Stevens asked, “Did he have your cell number? Your home address? Your fax?” Hillary’s answer was a very subdued almost embarrassingly sounding“no.” And when Pompeo asked why then were the 150 emails from Sidney Blumenthal…a former journalist who worked in the Clinton White House as senior adviser from 1997 to 2001, and who works for Media Matters, a liberal ‘watchdog’ organization that counters conservative claims in the media…and whom Hillary stated she was not close to…why then were all his emails responded to from an office that Hillary said had absolutely no computer in it at all.
Rep. Pompeo then held up a photo of two men… smoking gun number three…and Hillary went a ghostly shade of white when asked if she knew who they were to which she replied, “I do not.” Pompeo then told her that one of the men was al-Azawi, head of a jihadist group based in Benghazi and that the other was Ben Hamid, adding if she was aware that on the day he was killed Ambassador Stevens sent a cable about his meeting with Hamid. “Are you aware of that cable” Pompeo asked…to which Hillary again replied “No I am not.” Explaining that they, referring to Hamid, wanted an introductory meeting, that Hamid asked Stevens what we needed to bring security to Benghazi so your officials…to which Hillary abruptly interrupted and said, “I know nothing about this Congressman.” “I think that’s deeply disturbing. I think the fact that your was meeting” Pompeo said…again being interrupted with, “I’m sorry which team is that,” she croaked and it went downhill from there.
The Secretary of State…one of the most important positions in our government…first does not have a computer in her office according to Hillary…yet Blumenthal’s emails were responded to from that very office…from her iPad or iPhone perhaps…a game of word semantics as to what a computer is. And second, the Secretary of State had no idea about a critical meeting between her ambassador and the head of a terrorist group as they tried to temper down the escalating violence in Benghazi…we do not believe that for a minute.
And that brings us to smoking gun number four which came during Hillary’s first Q&A with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) where Hillary got caught like deer in the headlights when Jordan pointed to two emails…two important emails Hillary never turned over when asked if she had turned everything over…with the first being a note providing a readout of a call between Clinton and the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil sent on September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack. The email quotes Hillary as having said, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.
This is of major importance because it is a key piece of evidence coming directly from Hillary Clinton herself that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the Republican claim that both she and Obama knew damn well that the attack was planned well before Susan Rice went on the TV talk-show circuit a week after the attack and flat-out lied that said attack was solely motivated by the anti-islamic YouTube video ‘The Innocence of Muslims.’
The second email sent on the very day of the attack from Hillary to Diane Reynolds, an alias for Chelsea Clinton, states “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w/ a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow”…a direct admission to her daughter that the attack on the Benghazi mission had absolutely nothing to do with a protest over a video but had everything to do with an al-Qaeda attack.
“When I was speaking to the Egyptian prime minister or in the other two examples you showed, we had been told by Ansar al-Sharia [a militia group] that they took credit for it. It wasn’t until about 24 more hours later that they retracted taking credit for it,” Hillary said when counter Jordan’s question ignoring the fact…a fact she knew well…that Ansar al-Sharia is directly tied to al-Qaeda. Word semantics again won’t cut it here not with four dead Americans who did not have to die.
And Hillary than arrogantly and ever so very snidely said to Rep. Jordan that she was sorry that her version of events didn’t “fit your narrative.” Well one thing we can assure you is that this is not narrative…it is Hillary’s lies coming back to haunt via emails showing that she willingly aided…if not helped to concoct…the cover-up story about a video to not only protect Obama but to help assure his reelection.
And in the eleven hours of testimony smoking gun number five was exposed via ‘The Accountability Review Board Report’ (ARB)…a report that was trumpeted by the liberals who cited it as the definitive report that had already been issued by two men they felt were above reproach…came into play. That report recommended 29 fixes in an attempt to prevent a future tragedy of the Benghazi nature and named several people whose actions leading up to Benghazi were suspect or derelict. The ARB report, according to the left, is where all investigations into Benghazi should have ended and there can be little wonder why they desperately want that to be the end of it as Ambassador Tom Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullin were the two men, named by Hillary Clinton, who headed up the ARB, and are the men the left claimed to have been above reproach, and who conducted the most comprehensive review possible.
But the simple fact is their report was neither comprehensive nor, it seems, were Pickering and Mullins above reproach. First, in regard to their thoroughness… they did not have at their disposal a full account of Hillary’s emails nor did they have any of Ambassador Stevens’ emails. And while Pickering and Mullins did interview more than 100 people during their investigation, they managed to miss a critical few who were extremely relevant to the investigation, including 41 witnesses Gowdy’s committee interviewed that including seven eyewitness survivors of the Benghazi attacks itself. And most importantly, neither Pickering nor Mullins ever once interviewed or spoke with key-player Hillary Clinton herself.
And according to statements from Trey Gowdy, “The Select Committee is the first committee to interview relevant witnesses ranging from senior government officials to seven of the eyewitnesses to the attacks.”… “The Select Committee is the first and only committee to access over 50,000 documents from top officials in the State Department, the intelligence community and the White House.”… “The Select Committee is the first and only committee to access Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.”…“The Select Committee is the first and only committee to access thousands of pages of Ambassador Stevens’ e-mails” and “How can you possibly conduct a thorough investigation without access to the e-mails of the person most knowledgeable about Libya?”
And as for Pickering and Mullins being above reproach and running a non-partisan investigation, Chairman Gowdy proved they were not when he asked Hillary if she knew why Admiral Mullins would have placed a call to one of Hillary’s deputies urging that Charlene Lamb not be made available to a previous House Committee as a witness as, according to Mullins, she would present herself badly. However, Charlene Lamb did in fact testify in October of 2012, and in her testimony she not only admitted that Hillary’s State Department had hired supposed “local Libyan security” for Benghazi (who turned out to be part of the ‘February 17 Brigade,’ an arm of al-Qaeda) but that the budget cuts, so often cited by liberals as the root cause of security cutbacks in Benghazi, were not in any way responsible for the draw-downs of our own security forces in Benghazi.
And while some Democrats on the committee contended and still contend that “nothing new” came from this hearing they again were and are wrong as smoking gun number six was exposed by way of Hillary Clinton herself for as per her own words, she now owns Benghazi. During her testimony, Clinton never refuted that she took credit for Libya in 2012, in fact, a report issued by her own people at the State Department made it clear that it was Clinton who convinced Obama to ‘lead from behind’ and assist NATO and Arab partners in ousting Gaddafi; that it was Clinton who crowed of Gaddafi’s demise as in “We came, we saw and he died;” and it was Clinton who worked to install an interim government, anointed Chris Stevens as our next Ambassador to Libya; and who masterminded the lie that the new Libya was a friendly place for Americans.
But when Libya went from being Clinton’s baby to becoming Rosemary’s Baby, as the violence and islamic terrorist presence filled the vacuum of power in Libya…as more than 200 terrorist attacks rocked that country with 77 of those attacks taking place in Benghazi itself in 2012…documents clearly show Hillary Clinton trying to distance herself from involvement in Libya, while at the same time Obama was out campaigning on the lie that al-Qaeda was on the run. Both Hillary and Obama knew Libya was a disaster, that it was no safe place for any American to be as it was rapidly falling under terrorist control, and that Benghazi was perhaps the most dangerous and unstable city in the entirety of that country. But as Obama had invested his 2012 campaign in the lie that terrorism was waning, Hillary had hopes of investing her 2016 campaign on the, in her eyes, ‘supposed’ success of her involvement there.
Hit the Nail on the Head Again!