Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
The republicans will argue that there were several requests made to Clinton's office to increase security in Benghazi and Clinton denied them all. After the attacks the first story was that they were provoked by a video that had been released and the attackers were angry about the video. In reality it appears to have been an organized Al Qaeda attacks. Republicans will try to make it look like Clinton (and to a lesser degree Obama) tried to cover this up as a terrorist attack because it will make them look bad.
The reality is that there was likely spotty intelligence, a mistake was made by not sending more security and an attack happened taking American lives. No grand conspiracy, no big cover-up. Since Clinton is the front runner for the democrats the republicans will do anything they have to in order discredit her and hurt her chances (and the same would be happening if the parties were reversed). I bet if Clinton had just retired and was living a quiet life right now we wouldn't be hearing anything of it.
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So requests were made to the Clinton's office to increase security in Benghazi. On the surface, that sounds horrible but.... How many locations does the State Department maintain? Currently there are 196 countries, and it's safe to assume that we have multiple locations in most countries. How many of these locations recommended security increases - One? Ten? One hundred? All of them?
If I understand correctly, it's not the State Department itself that is in charge of security for embassies. In fact, it seems these issues are controlled by Congress; It's part of funding budgets. Seems the Republicans cut the budget for the State Department:
For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department?s Worldwide Security Protection program ? well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration?s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration?s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans? proposed cuts to her department would be ?detrimental to America?s national security? ? a charge Republicans rejected.
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news link)
So we have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying (then) cuts to her department hurt security at such locations while the Republicans rejected this idea, and when the attack happened the blamed it on her after they failed to fund security?
I don't like Hillary and I do not want her to be our next president. But this is nothing more than pointing fingers, trying to assign blame, and making a presidential candidate look bad - and they are spending our tax dollars in the process and wasting a lot of time where our elected government officials could have done something good.
At what point in time do our elected officials do their jobs?