Her words are already long gone from the daily flow; in fact, they
never really resonated at all, were all but ignored by the
mainstream media, and were characterized more as a feisty
in-your-face comeback than what they truly were.
And what
they truly were was horrifying — but at the same time a deep
insight into the Democratic mindset, as well as a peek at what
may be coming in 2016.
Last week, Secretary of State Hillary RodhamClinton
finally appeared to answer questions before two
congressional panels on exactly what happened at the U.S.
Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
That
day, the consulate was overrun by heavily armed terrorists,
some with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, others with
high-powered assault weapons. They swept past the almost
nonexistent security, killed the U.S. ambassador and set the
building on fire. They followed when dozens of Americans fled
to a more-heavily fortified annex nearby, but U.S. forces did
nothing during the next 10 hours and three more were killed,
including two Navy SEALs.
For weeks, the White House
and top administration officials said the assault was merely
a protest turned violent: The angry mass had gathered to
protest a short video posted on YouTube
that Muslims reportedly found offensive. It was, they said,
spontaneous, and it was, they said, all about that video.
The hearing last week was a fact-finding mission: Lawmakers charged with oversight of the State Department
gathered to ask the secretary of state — for the first time —
what went wrong, and to find out, if possible, the cause of
the deadly blunder. More, they wanted to hear from the
secretary herself just why the administration had said for so
long that a video caused an impromptu protest that led to the
death of the U.S. ambassador.
Asked during a Senate hearing why they had given out faulty information for so long, Mrs. Clinton
grew angry and, with her voice rising, he hands flailing,
said: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead
Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys
out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans?
What difference, at this point, does it make?!”
And that,
in a nutshell, sums up the frightening Democratic mindset. The
administration had buried the matter for months in an internal
investigation: No one from the White House to the State Department
would comment on what happened, turning away queries with
the simple: “It’s under investigation.” And they weren’t about
to start explaining now.
Remember, the story had changed completely just hours before another congressional hearing months earlier. State Department
officials, speaking with anonymity, had scrambled to hold a
hastily-arranged conference call with reporters to say, in
essence, “Oh, turns out it was terrorists, not just protesters,
who attacked in Benghazi. And oh, nothing to do with any
video.” That call came just before officials planned to tell a
completely new story, but this time to lawmakers, where — as
Mrs. Clinton learned after her husband’s affair with a White House intern — lying under oath is a felony.
So,
lawmakers still wanted to know why the administration dispatched
aides to the Sunday talk shows right after the deadly attack
to say it was the culmination of a spontaneous attack over a
video. Later, Mrs. Clinton
and President Obama would say that they were merely offering up
the best information at the time, but as information dribbed
and drabbed out over the following months, it turned out that
no one in the intelligence community ever said the attack
was spontaneous or caused by a video posted on YouTube nearly six months earlier.
But Mrs. Clinton
made clear at the hearing that she didn’t have to answer to
anyone — certainly not elected lawmakers, let alone the
American people. “What difference does it make?!” she bellowed.
Now, this hearing was in fact a hearing intended to find out why the administration said the attack came after an impromptu protest over a video.
Senators made clear in the days preceded the hearing that they
planned to ask just that, get the answer to that most pressing
unanswered question.
“You know, to be clear,” the
secretary explained, as if to children, “it is, from my
perspective, less important today, looking backwards, as to
why these militants decided they did it [sic], than to find them
and bring them to justice.”
So, from her perspective, there
doesn’t need to be any investigation into why the
administration said what it said. It’s like a child breaking a
lamp, lying about it to his parents, and then saying, “Look,
we could go on and on about who said what about breaking the lamp,
but fixing the lamp now is really all that’s important —
let’s move on.”
And that is terrifying. The secretary of
state said simply, “The ends justify the means.” The Obama
administration had lied about what happened in Benghazi to
help secure a second term for the president, buried the murder
of Americans in a private investigation, then, when finally
questioned, said, “What difference does it make!?” what we said
way back then.
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