"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday said the first line-of-duty death of a U.S. ambassador since the Carter Administration was on her. "I take responsibility," Clinton told CNN's Elise Labott during a brief trip to Lima, Peru. "I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision."" The Atlantic
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Hillary Clinton properly took the rhetorical "spear" for this. As she says, she is responsible for everything that happens in her department of the US Government. As she also said, there was very little chance that POTUS or VPOTUS would have known anything of the details of security in Benghazi unless something spectacular occurred before the fact to alert them. The assumption would have been made by them that State Department administrative services would respond to incidents as appropriate. Does that seem odd? It should not. The US Government is too big and wildly articulated for it to function any other way. State Department security consultants had recommended greater security. Security consultants always recommend greater security. Those recommendations justify their contracts. Whether or not work gets done in hardening particular facilities is largely a matter of available budgeted funds. Priorities have to be set in an environment of world-wide threat and a Congress that has always liked to pare down State Department requests for money. This is in notable contrast to the largesse heaped on Defense and the intelligence community. Bottom Line: Some mid level person in the State Department probably gave more work in Banghazi a lower priority than proved prudent. Whoever made that decision should be held accountable for it, not because of some lack of virtue in the decision, but rather to make others more alert to such situations.
The Romney campaign is doing everything it can to make a moral issue of this unfortunate event. How sad! They should listen to the appeals of Stevens' father for a dignified response.
Will this be a significant factor in the outcome of the election? I doubt it. The American electorate is actually too smart to be deceived on this. pl
