Hillary, Benghazigate, and 2016

Has Hillary Clinton begun her 2016 presidential campaign? “Oh no, not that!!!” you scream. “Not another presidential campaign season so soon.” Well, take heart. She won’t be flooding the airwaves with ads telling you why she should be the next great Democrat president of the United States. She will instead be campaigning on behalf of various mid-term Democrat candidates for congressional seats and state-level offices – all safe shoo-ins, of course, whose victories will give her the persona of kingmaker. And she will release a book. In other words, yes, she has begun her 2016 presidential campaign.

This is exactly the modus operandi Obama used in 2006 – campaign on behalf of mid-term candidates and be sure to drop an off-hand comment to their election organizations here and there, “Oh, by the way, did I mention that I’m running for president in two years?” It’s campaigning on the cheap because her stump expenses for other candidates are paid by their campaigns. And don’t forget the book. It’s coffee table publicity. Obama’s was entitled The Audacity of Hope. Wonder what happened to all that hope? Not audacious enough, I guess.

In the 2008 campaign, the media lined up behind Obama – the audacious guy – not Hillary – the sure fire choice because of her last name. You’d think she’d still be torqued about that. But politics makes for strange candidate behavior. Prior to a televised debate the presidential opponents smile and shake hands before they trade barbs and insults about each other for an hour, then they smile and shake hands again. I’ve seen that behavior before in sumo wrestling. Before and after wrestling, the opponents squat – the sumo equivalent of a handshake. At least in political debates the opponents don’t bump bellies and appear almost naked except for those funny-looking thong things.

The media has already started lining up behind Hillary for the 2016 campaign, even though the campaign hasn’t begun and other candidates haven’t declared. (Shocking.)  The January 27 cover of Time magazine, for example, shows a huge pant-suited leg and black pump shoe – Hillary’s standard garb – with a miniature hapless male opponent hanging off the heel. A miniature 2016 campaign poster has been discarded on the floor and the owner of the leg is walking off of the cover. Mission accomplished. The huge-miniature symbolism speaks volumes. “Can Anyone Stop Hillary?” the Times cover rhetorically asks. And a sub-headline proclaims, “How to scare off your rivals without actually running (yet).” Wow! What subtlety!

The fawning Time article, obviously written by an ardent Hillary admirer, trumpets “One widespread forecast holds that Clinton is poised for a cakewalk of historic proportions.” Well, there you have it. The 2016 presidential election may as well be canceled. It’s over. Hillary has cakewalked to victory. With historic proportions.

Hillary hasn’t officially declared her candidacy yet. That way she can duck all the specific policy questions while she’s running for president. “Madam Secretary, are you running for president?” Moi?

I wouldn’t crank up that cakewalk band just yet, however. The vice president usually gets a nod to carry on the policies of the current administration. So expect 74-year old Joe “Foot in the Mouth” Biden to campaign through at least Round One of the 2016 election. Obama sorta’ has to support his candidacy, rather than Hillary’s, or else admit the guy he selected twice to be one heartbeat away from becoming president for the past eight years is really a dummkopf, not qualified to be president.

An interesting Public Policy Polling survey last year showed 64% of Democrats supported Hillary and 18% supported Six-pack Joe. The support for other Democrat favorites dropped off significantly in single digits. But if Hillary wasn’t in the race, PPP showed Biden got 49% with barely double digit support for the two leading other Dem favorites. Democrat pundits point to this as evidence that Hillary has to run to prevent “Loose Cannon Joe” from becoming the party candidate.

There will be other candidates in the race. Elizabeth Warren of Cherokee Nation fame will surely run, likely to test the waters for a future presidential bid. (Lord, take me home before that happens!) Possibly Andrew Cuomo will run, while neglecting his day job more than usual, until primary voters convince him he’s a boring boor. Don’t discount another run by the unctuous John Kerry, especially if he has one or two foreign policy coups – more than Hillary has – and after all Kerry will be unemployed after January 2017. A couple of Democrat governors (folks who have actually run a government) have raised their hands and shouldn’t be taken lightly. So a cakewalk and coronation as the party’s nominee it won’t be for Hillary – Time magazine notwithstanding. The White House is rarely handed to a candidate, especially a non-vice presidential first term campaigner.

You’ve got to wonder why a 67-year old woman would put herself through the rigors of a nomination campaign and then a presidential election campaign. These days a 67-year old person is not elderly but combined with the fact that she had a blood clot in her brain last January and one in her leg during Bill Clinton’s second term, 20-hour days for two years is going to take its toll, and Hillary has a reputation for being a stress carrier and that word that starts with a “b.” And if Hillary wins – BIG if – it’s four more years of long stressful days – unless she’s like our current president who takes more vacations than Rick Steves. Also, daughter Chelsea announced last fall that 2014 was the Year of the Baby. Campaigning means grandma won’t be taking trips to the zoo pushing her grandchild in a stroller.

I think the answer to “why put yourself through this?” is the same thing that has kept her married to her philandering husband. Politics runs in their veins. Both have been immersed in politics for 40 years. Who needs love when there are elections to be won? Bill and Hillary Clinton are a political party of two who happen to be married – casually, it seems. But political candidate Hillary is no Bill Clinton. I know that fact galls her feminist pals, but she ain’t got what he has.

She is married to a great politician but none of it rubbed off on her. Hillary is “plain Jane” when it comes to political charm, instincts, and settling for small wins. 

Her career as a US Senator was unremarkable. When General Petraeus testified before a Senate committee in 2007 to give a progress report on the Iraq war, Senator Hillary, who was a 2008 presidential contender at that point, essentially called him a liar. She said that his report required "a willing suspension of disbelief." Not too smart, Candidate Hillary. The video clip showing her insulting a cooperative Senate witness, not to mention the top commander of the war, ran over and over and over on news channels. With each rerunning, her smug, obviously pre-planned use of the “willing suspension” phrase was a put down intended to play to the growing public dissatisfaction with the war. Instead it showed the Independent voter, on whom every candidate depends, what a classless (that word with a “b” again) she is.

The “willing suspension” phrase was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to explain the willingness of readers to accept as true a fictional story as they are subsumed into it observing its unfolding. (FYI: I attended a military prep school and my literature teacher, Captain Standard, was a Coleridge junkie who compelled us to memorize long passages from Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.) Hillary may be a closet Coleridge scholar for all I know, but the phrase isn’t widely used. And as I watched the video clip reruns, her use of it was so canned, I suspect a staff member suggested she would appear erudite if she inserted it in her comments. Instead of appearing eruditely doubting, it compounded her uncharismatic image as a (that word again that starts with a “b”.)

Her political ineptness was on full display as HillaryCare was birthed in secret by her hand-picked liberal academics who were clueless about the real world of healthcare delivery. Bob Dole called it “dead on arrival” when she delivered it to the Senate with the fanfare of Pompey entering Jerusalem. It never made it to a floor vote, but it did help the Democrats lose Congress in their stunning defeat of 1994. Only when Democrats had bullet-proof majorities in both chambers in 2010 were they able to ram through the now-hated ObamaCare, sans a single Republican vote. Given Hillary’s parentage of HillaryCare, it will be hard for her to criticize Obama’s despised health law, which has a good chance of becoming a political albatross around her neck. (Note to Hillary: to understand this metaphor, refer to your bud Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.) When it became apparent that Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance was at best a misrepresentation and at worse a lie, who called him out? Hillary? No, her husband, the ever-popular former president did.

Supporters like to point out that Hillary put more miles on the State Department jet than any previous Secretary of State in an attempt to impersonate Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy (she didn’t log the most miles, Condi Rice did.) In fact, her shuttling accomplished little more than wear out government property. On her watch American prestige in the world fell to a new low. Iran is fast becoming a nuclear nation, blowing off US diplomatic attempts to stop them, and the mullahs supply terrorists with impunity to kill American soldiers. Syria scoffed at stern warnings of a “red line” eventually allowing our enemy, Russia, to negotiate a treaty that would have made a good skit on Saturday Night Live. And al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, killing our ambassador and a security agent and then hours later attacked another building, killing two more security personnel. All four were under diplomatic protection. Obama was nowhere to be found during the attack, Hillary knows what happened but isn’t talking, and the Democrat-controlled Senate issued a “bipartisan” report last week that would make “the dog ate my homework” explanation respectable. It uses the word “terrorist” 70 times. But Hillary is mentioned only once in a section written by Republicans. Who was running the State Department? Apparently no one.

An airhead on Governor Chris Christie’s staff closes a bridge and causes four days of traffic jams, launching three separate investigations, one by the US Attorney and FBI, as if this constituted high crimes and misdemeanors. Four Americans with US diplomatic protection are killed and 18 months later, no foreign national has been captured or killed, no one in the State Department has lost his/her job, and the US Senate’s investigation led it to conclude: “The committee found the attacks were preventable based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya . . . and given the known security shortfalls at the US Mission.” Apparently the Senate report is the final word on this matter.

Even Susan Collins (R-ME) who is about as Republican as my Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier called Benghazigate "a broken system overseen by senior leadership [who] contributed to the vulnerability of US diplomats ... in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and yet the Secretary of State has not held anyone responsible for the system's failings." The mirror! The mirror! Tell her to look in the mirror, Susan!

I don’t want to belabor Benghazigate. Greg Hicks, one of the Benghazigate whistle-blowers published a Wall Street Editorial this week disputing recent political efforts to blame the dead guy – Ambassador Chris Stevens. This blog is about Hillary and her 2016 chance of winning the presidential election with her political baggage. But last January, when she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) did a “Petraeus” on Hillary, pressing her hard to say what she believes caused the attacks (given the cockamamie video story that no one on Team Obama will admit to dreaming up.) Hillary exploded in full fury at Johnson: "Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night and decided to go kill some Americans? At this point what difference does it make, Senator?"

Well, it makes a lot of difference to the families of the dead guys, Hillary, and it’s going to make a lot of difference to you. Because you’re going to see that video clip run over and over and over by your Republican presidential opponent.

Benghazigate Breadcrumbs

In the movie Conspiracy Theory, actor Mel Gibson plays Jerry Fletcher, a quirky cab driver who believes that inexplicable world events are evidence of government conspiracies. He publishes his conspiracy theories in a newsletter which no one takes seriously, including the theater audience, until it turns out that one theory is correct. Because he has blown their cover, government agents track him down and try to kill him.

Most things are as they appear to be or as we’re told they are. Except conspiracies. They are secreted for a reason. And they remain undercover until someone suspends disbelief in the obvious explanation and considers other interpretations of the evidence that lead to a different conclusion.

I suspect that’s true of the emerging Benghazigate cover-up.

In early January, then former Secretary of State Clinton was called to testify before a Senate hearing looking into the government’s handling of the Benghazi attack before, during, and after it occurred. Her appearance before the Senate panel was destined to turn out badly because (a) Clinton doesn’t feel she is accountable to anyone, and (b) former Senator Clinton’s demeanor during the questioning suggested she was a bit torqued that she had to answer to those who were once her peers.

Her eruption occurred as Senator Ron Johnson questioned Clinton on what she knew and when she knew it. In view of the overwhelming evidence that the Benghazi attack was planned and perpetrated by al-Qaeda, Johnson was more than a tad interested in the cockamamie story floated by UN Ambassador Rice, Obama, and Clinton that the attack was a response to an online video lampooning the prophet Muhammad. A transcript and video of her barely contained fury with Johnson puts the lie to her apologists who claim the now famous “what difference does it make?” fulmination is quoted out of context. See for yourself. Here’s the text.

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? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.

Hmm. As Hamlet’s mom observed, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Nine months have passed since the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his security detail. We’ve heard the Obama administration’s explanations du jour. They are, like most things Obama, a work in progress. Predictably, no one is to blame for Benghazi. Like the IRS and Associated Press revelations, the people who are in charge strangely never seem in charge when incompetence or scandals are uncovered. Last month we heard the testimony of two whistleblowers who blew the administration’s cover story and were demoted when they unsuccessfully tried to have the Benghazi story told truthfully.

The Democrat Party leaders point out – at least once a day – that the failure of the Republicans to uncover a conspiracy is proof that there’s not one. Well, that’s the way it is with conspiracies, Sherlock; the breadcrumbs are usually hard to follow. But there are enough of them here to suggest that the entire story, if not the true story, is yet to be known.

Keep in mind that, as the administration’s story morphed from video to terrorist act, the attack on the Benghazi occurred on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Hardly a coincidence in that date. Also keep in mind that this tragic debacle occurred within two months of the presidential election. Lots of self-serving interests in keeping that unfavorable story off the front pages. And why Benghazi? The Libyan embassy is in Tripoli 400 miles west. Benghazi is a consulate – a ramshackle building with a nearby annex. There are larger, more prestigious embassies throughout the Middle East and surrounding countries. Why not attack one of those?

Last year I blogged about the Benghazi attack and the deaths which Obama called “bumps in the road.” You can read that blog post to get the details. Today I will try to follow the breadcrumbs

The alleged reason for intervening in the Libyan uprising was to prevent a humanitarian crisis – i.e. a large scale loss of civilian lives caught in the crossfire of the uprising. If the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Yemeni uprisings taught anything, however, they taught that there are very few civilians around in an anti-government revolution. Everyone takes sides and there may be more than two sides, although it usually boils down to a ruthless government against everyone else. Everyone else is usually a loose federation of parties whose only common denominator is to get rid of the guy in power.

Such is the modern Middle East which is comprised of ancient tribes and sub-tribes many of whom hate each other. And let’s not forget that the guy in power is no outsider. He was a tribal leader in the bad old days and retains tribal identity once in power. The Arab spring, which Obama laughably calls an outbreak of democracy, is an outbreak of regional civil wars with bad guys on all sides. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to intervene in someone else’s civil war, especially when it’s hard to know who to cheer for. But it is seriously stupid to help destabilize or destroy a stable government without any thought – and certainly no control – concerning the power vacuum that follows … which so far hasn’t produced an outbreak of democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, whose ruler is still in place.

A world yearning to be free is a fanciful if not incorrect belief among western democracies. Democracy and representative government is hard work. Regional stability seems to me to be a more preferable goal even if achieved by means the west finds distasteful. Qaddafi is now gone, with the help of the west, and Libya has been made safe for outside interference, civil unrest, internal power struggles, violence, and the ever-present conflict between secular Sunnis and Shiite zealots. Absent the iron-fisted leaders that kept them in check, the Muslim Brotherhood is free to move about the Middle East – at least most of it.

So, what if humanitarian motives weren’t the real reason for involving ourselves in Libya? Of the more than 30 people rescued from the Benghazi compound only seven were with the State Department. The rest were with the CIA. The CIA, in fact, was the initial presence in Benghazi arriving in February 2011 just after the uprising began. It set up shop in the consulate annex, which it called an office of the State Department consulate. As a practical matter, the State Department presence in Benghazi was simply to provide cover for the CIA. Even Libyan authorities didn’t know the CIA was there.

As the Libyan authority began to collapse so did its weapons arsenal, including a substantial number of shoulder-fired heat-seeking surface to air rocket launchers. It’s estimated that Qaddafi had over 20,000 of them. Since the UN-sanctioned humanitarian effort created an alliance of US, British, and French air forces, the small Libyan air force was suppressed. Thus these weapons, now in the hands of the rebels fighting to topple Qaddafi, were of little value. What the rebels needed was cash and the CIA obligingly supplied it – in return for the weapons. It makes sense that the CIA would have established relations early on with rebel leaders whose palms could be greased to get these weapons.

For what purpose? To get them in the hands of the Syrian rebels who were getting mauled in their effort to topple the Iranian and Russian backed Assad regime. The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship carrying a 400-ton arms cargo docked in a Turkish port. Its cargo would be trucked over the border and into the hands of the Syrian rebels. Shortly after, the Syrian rebels began shooting down Assad’s murderous helicopters and jets – a capability they hadn’t had before.

The CIA, of course, denies its involvement in the Syrian uprising, which would be expected of a government agency whose business is spying. But questions are beginning to be asked by those in Congress who are following the breadcrumbs. Was the CIA the core of the US operations in Benghazi with the State Department as its cover, and was it involved in gun-running? The breadcrumbs indicate yes on both counts.

Conspicuously absent when the four caskets arrived at Andrews Air Force Base was David Petraeus, then the head of the CIA, even though two caskets contained the remains of his men. He says he stayed away to avoid revealing a CIA connection in the Benghazi tragedy. CIA careerists despised him for it.

The cover on the CIA’s role in supplying Syrian rebels was blown a year ago and the CIA most surely concocted the fantasy of the lampooning video, which Clinton, Rice, and Obama so willingly peddled as co-conspirators in the cover-up.

Those asking the breadcrumb questions are mostly Republicans. Those deflecting the questions as a non-issue are mostly Democrats intent on protecting Clinton, who will undoubtedly run for President in 2016.

But there is no way that Clinton’s ambassador, Chris Stevens, did not know about the weapons transfer. He was the face of the US government to the anti-Qaddafi rebels and he therefore had to know that al-Qaeda was fighting with the rebels – contrary to Obama’s recent assertion that al-Qaeda wasn’t involved in Benghazi. Stevens’ principal contact with the Libyan rebels was known to have met with Syrian rebel leaders after Qaddafi was killed. The Syrians crossed into Turkey for the meeting whose purpose was to negotiate how Libya could supply money, arms, and fighters to aid Syrian rebels. Stevens' last meeting on the day he was killed was with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, most likely in connection with weapon shipments through Turkey. How could Clinton not have known what Stevens, her subordinate, knew?

Democrats on investigative committees and the media are trying mightily to divert attention away from Obama – what he knew and when he knew it. He may have broken the law unless he can establish plausible deniability that he knew anything about the weapons shipments to the Syrian rebels. The exposure of the weapons transfer, therefore, raises serious problems for him. The transfer of weapons to al-Qaeda, who are known to be among the fighters in the Syrian uprising, is prevented under a UN arms embargo, which is binding on all member countries.

Moreover, Vladimir Putin has accused the US – Obama – of supplying weapons to “terrorists” who are trying to overthrow the president of a sovereign country. Obama has, of course, denied the charge, claiming US aid in Syria was limited to humanitarian help. What do you call something someone says knowing it’s not true?

The great imponderable here is why the Benghazi attack occurred. The existence of the CIA was unknown in Libya. Posing as State Department staff, the CIA pumped $40 million into Libyan rebel pockets to buy arms from the Qaddafi arsenal for Syria. Thus, the attack could not have been aimed at the CIA.
 

Was Stevens the target? Chris Stevens was very popular among Libyans, many of whom wanted their picture taken with him when he traveled in public. He refused a visible security detail when he was in public places making him more accessible. Those who say he wasn’t the target of the attack, that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, ignore the larger question of the attack itself – why it happened at all.

This week, Obama announced that the US would begin supplying arms to the Syrian rebels because Assad had used chemical weapons against them. That’s a ruse allowing the US to do overtly what it has been doing covertly. For those who think outside the dots, a dot worth considering is this one. The Benghazi attack was a hit job – a Middle East tit-for-tat.

The Russians, Iranians, and Syrian government privately knew arms were flowing to the rebels from Libya. They knew the American CIA was involved, at least in Turkey. And they may have known that Stevens was involved in the illegal gun-running. It would not have taken a lot of effort to organize a hit squad in Syria and send them to Libya to do the deed. As fluid as Middle East borders are, a Syrian al-Qaeda group would have blended in with local Libyan militia and perhaps even been welcomed, whether the Syrian’s mission was known or not. The state sponsors of the hit squad would surely have known the gravity of their act. Wars have started over less. Maybe one has already started.

Those are some breadcrumbs worth following.