The Real Benghazi Scandal
Congressional investigators are pointing fingers in the wrong direction if they want to save more U.S. lives.
"Americans died in Benghazi.... Clearly, they were not in a position where they were adequately protected." --President Obama
Questioning how to change that truth is worth America's time. . . . But the congressional hearings . . . are not that inquiry. Congress could have focused on three time periods during their investigation: before, during, and after the attack. In all but exclusively focusing on what Administration officials said after Stevens's death, Congress isn't just wasting America's time -- it's squandering a chance to save lives in the future.
The hearing also brought back to the headlines a set of talking points used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on talk shows . . . The White House quickly shared its entire archive of emails related to the taking points . . . The larger point is this: the details Susan Rice mentioned in that first round of interviews changed nothing. No lives were lost, and none stood to be saved, by her talk-show appearance.
More appropriate is the attention that has been paid to the decisions made during the September 11, 2012 attack. That night, military and civilian officials in Africa and Washington responded to a difficult, violent, and rapidly changing situation, struggling to save lives. But here too, the focus has been on the wrong factors. It is easy to second-guess tactical calls made in the heat of the moment -- particularly for those with a political axe to grind -- but far more important and helpful to ask whether that night's decision-makers were equipped to confront their moment of crisis, and what can be done to ensure they are in the future.
Which brings me to the third timeframe [before the attack], virtually unaddressed during the circus of the recent Benghazi hearings. Security at the Benghazi compound was, according to the independent panel commissioned to investigate the attack, "grossly inadequate." There were no Marine guards. Security was provided through a little-known British firm called Blue Mountain Group, which hired about 20 untrained, inexperienced Libyan men. . . . The cost of the security contract for Benghazi -- $783,284 -- amounts to little more than a rounding error. . . .
The independent investigators' report noted that the State Department "struggle[s] to obtain the resources necessary to carry out its work" . . . Hillary Clinton waged a losing fight with Congress for embassy security resources . . . Some of the ringleaders of last week's hearing were among the prominent opponents to that spending, with Representative Chaffetz and Representative Darrell Issa joining to cut nearly half a billion dollars from the State Department security accounts that cover armored vehicles, security systems, and guards. In Fiscal Year 2011, House Republicans cut $128 million from the Obama Administration's requests for embassy security funding; in 2012, they cut another $331 million.
Issa once personally voted to cut almost 300 diplomatic security positions. In 2011, after one of many fruitless trips to the Hill to beg House Republicans for resources, an exhausted, prophetic Hillary Clinton warned that cuts to embassy spending "will be detrimental to America's national security." . . .
America is far less served by the endless recitation of calls made and talking points issued than it would be by a hard look at the members of Congress that failed to provide resources . . .
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/the-real-benghazi-scandal/275950/