Benghazi Whistle-Blowers: We Sat And Watched Them Die

Investor's Business Daily ^ | May 6, 2013 | IBD EDITORIALS

[raptor22]

The Scandal In Libya: On the night Bengazi burned and four Americans died, forces ready to deploy were told to stand down and our secretary of state cut out of the loop her department's counter-terrorism bureau.

Few people know who Gregory Hicks and Mark Thompson are, but then nobody knew who John Dean was when he testified at the Watergate hearings and blew the Nixon administration and its coverup out of the water.

"I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go," says Hicks, the U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya on that fateful night.

"I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning," he says and reportedly will repeat when he testifies before the House Oversight Committee of Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday.

Yet, also from the get-go, Secretary Clinton seemed determined to put that possibility out of her mind and the mind of everyone else.

Thompson, a former Marine and the current deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's counterterrorism bureau, will make the allegation that Clinton "tried to cut the department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision making" as State responded to the Benghazi attacks.

From the testimony of Hicks and Thompson, it is clear that Secretary Clinton didn't want to know or admit it was a terrorist attack, the only possible reason being that it wouldn't fit the administration's narrative of a victory over al-Qaida in a war on terror that was now over. It would hurt the president she served and possibly her own presidential chances in 2016.

Thompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account was suppressed by the official investigative panel — the Accountability Review Board — that Clinton convened to review the episode.

[TChad]

During Monicagate, one technique used by Hillary Clinton to avoid answering embarrassing questions was to say “I’ve already answered these questions!” Congenital liar that she is, Hillary made it sound convincing.

[jonrick46]

I predict Bill Richardson at the Crat nominee.

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[supremedoctrine]

Richardson’s joshing, benign demeanor has for years earned him a perennial niche, and gotten him a long way as a talking head/surrogate for Dem Party “principles”, but I can’t see many rallying to him, for that very reason. He has no fire, hell, Romney had more fire than Richardson.

[jonrick46]

"From the testimony of Hicks and Thompson, it is clear that Secretary Clinton didn't want to know or admit it was a terrorist attack, the only possible reason being that it wouldn't fit the administration's narrative of a victory over al-Qaida in a war on terror that was now over."

What if there were a more evil motivation. What if there were a darker purpose? What if information about the transfer of weapons from Libya to Syria was deemed so sensitive that those involved, Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Sean Smith, a Foreign Service information officer, and Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, two former Navy SEALs working as security personnel at the consulate in Benghazi, could not trusted to remain alive. What if they were allowed to die because it would simplify a difficult security issue? Zer0's inaction in the crisis enabled the murder of these Americans.

An analogy: Let's say Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife, Katherine Russell, knew her husband was building bombs and heard he was going to the Marathon to set them off. Would she be considered an accessory if she did nothing about it?

Zer0 knew what was going on in Benghazi because there was a drone overhead watching the entire situation. They could have coordinated a rescue response using the information from that drone.