Report and Review of the 2nd Benghazi Select Committee Hearing

OP/ED

All quotes and images used via the Fair Use Act

On Dec, 10, 2014; the Benghazi Select Committee, for which this blog and group campaigned 4 hours a day, every day online for 17 months, had its second hearing, yesterday. Greg Starr, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, and Steve Linick, Inspector General with the State Department, both answerable to Hillary Clinton and working for the Obama Administration during the Benghazi attack and murders, testified before the House Select Committee on the events surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.

In his opening statement, Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor who never lost a case, showed admirable determination in his insistence that this committee will continue on and on through the months until we know exactly what happened 

"... BUT I ALSO PLEDGE THAT WE'RE GOING TO KEEP ASKING QUESTIONS UNTIL WE HAVE A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HAPPENED. TO THAT END WE WILL HAVE HEARINGS, IN JANUARY, IN FEBRUARY, IN MARCH AND UNTIL... AND THAT MEANS ACCESS TO ALL THE DOCUMENTS AND THAT MEANS ACCESS TO ALL OF THE WITNESSES WITH KNOWLEDGE. THIS COMMITTEE WILL BE THE LAST BEST HOPE FOR ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS SURROUNDING THE ATTACKS IN BENGHAZI. WE MAY ACTUALLY WIND UP ANSWERING SOME OF THE QUESTIONS MORE THAN ONCE. WE MAY RISK ANSWERING A QUESTION TWICE. THAT SEEMS LIKE A REALLY SMALL INVESTMENT COMPARED WITH WHAT OTHERS HAVE GIVEN AND ARE CURRENTLY GIVING."

Democrats on the committee, unfortunately albeit predictably,  consistently tried to ignore the details of what happened in Benghazi from a justice perspective and make the point that the hearings were about "moving forward" - to "insure this never happens again" - clearly trying to protect the President so as to protect the democrat party and hence, their own political futures. Democrat Representative Cummings basically illustrated that in full measure without once mentioning that the Democrats had any concern about justice for the slain Ambassador and the Ambassador's people , making the absurd claim that the main concern of the families of the slain was that future embassies would be protected, never mentioning justice for their loved ones. It was theater of the absurd played to a nauseating degree, and we award a mountain of shame upon Cummings for expressing such a, in our opinion, brutally callous and utterly unconscionable, clearly politically-motivated, viewpoint.

Congressman Jim Jordan, the third Republican to speak and question the two witnesses was spectacular and absolutely withering in his pointed questions, and in so doing took what we regarded as Starr's absurd sense of inflated self-importance down to that of the appearance of a little boy who had been caught doing a very bad thing:

".... I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. BUT I'M NOT ALONE. CLEAR BACK IN 1999 SECRETARY ALBRIGHT SAID THE SAME THING. SHE THOUGHT WE SHOULD HAVE THIS AT THE UNDERSECRETARY LEVEL. TODD KYLE IN THE BEST PRACTICES PANEL THOUGHT WE SHOULD HAVE IT AT THE UNDERSECRETARY LEVEL. AND THE GUY SITTING BESIDE YOU (co-witness Linick) THINKS WE NEED TO ELEVATE THIS TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL. SO I GUESS WE'VE GOT TWO BIG QUESTIONS THAT THIS COMMITTEE NEEDS TO ANSWER. WHY IN THE WORLD WON'T THE STATE DEPARTMENT DO WHAT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS NEEDS TO  BE DONE: ELEVATE THIS TO THE HIGHEST THAT WE CAN? MAKE IT EQUAL TO 'CULTURAL EXCHANGE'  AND 'INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING', AND THEN THE BIG QUESTION AGAIN THAT I HOPE WE GET AN ANSWER TO IN THIS COMMITTEE. 'WHY WERE WE THERE (Benghazi)? WHY WERE WE THERE WITH THESE FACTS AND CIRCUMSTANCES?' THAT'S A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW AND THESE FOUR INDIVIDUALS - AND THE FAMILIES OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES - WOULD LIKE TO KNOW AS WELL. "

GOP Rep Martha Roby skillfully brought out that, on the issue of "going forward", that the Obama Administration has totally failed to implement the Benghazi review board's security recommendations and Roby did so in a way that was quiet, polite, and ultimately devastating: Nothing is worse than having your entire argument dismantled by someone as courteous as Republican Representative Roby.

Republican Peter Roskam got into the details to a terrific degree and basically showed the incompetence of the Obama Administration on all levels of security and how the state department simply threw in the towel on security. Watching Starr's pathetically weak responses to Roskam became downright embarrassing. HUGE kudos to Roskam for getting the info he wanted, showing how little info Starr really had to give that was relevant and, in all respects, controlling the moment with great equal measures of human theater and sincere fact-finding.

Democrat Adam Schiff, alas, was the best at illustrating the Democrats' somewhat disingenuous approach to questioning by simply running out the clock on his own time, asking about general security around the world and almost nothing whatsoever specific about Benghazi. It was a shameful display of wonton disregard for the memories of the slain heroes and the grief and need for justice expressed by the heroes' families.

Democrats are the party of compassion? Sorry, but if the Democrat members of the Benghazi Select Committee amount to the collective textbook example of democrat compassion then I must say it: Absolute B*llsh*t. It is clear and apparent every Democrat on that committee, in our opinion, wants to sweep the facts of what happened in Benghazi under the rug and they aren't even showing the good grace to be subtle about it.

It seems very much like the Democrats really don't want to talk about what happened in Benghazi, only what the US can do from this point forward. That is literally like a criminal investigation in which the police only want to know how similar crimes in the future can be avoided and have no interest in finding out who committed the crime actually being investigated. That is exactly what the Democrats are doing - and in so doing playing politics to protect an Administration so as to protect their political party from the fallout of unflattering  disclosures and keep America from understanding acts by the Administration which may prove shattering in their illegality.

We are proud of this Benghazi Select Committee, proud of the members and proud of Chairman Rep Trey Gowdy who is demonstrating amply, so far, his dedication to this issue of justice for the Benghazi slain and why he never lost a case as a prosecutor.

We only have one thing to request of the Benghazi Select Committee and that's an answer to a question which we have been asking now for two years: WHERE ARE THE BENGHAZI SURVIVOR WITNESSES? Only the people on the ground can give a full accounting of what happened over those several horrendous hours, and if they have been shut up by the Obama Administration which now seems plain, then finding them and bringing every one of them in to testify must be the first order of business attended to from this point forward, or this entire Select committee will be reduced to a hypothetical exercise in meaningless political procedure. Indeed, that is a basic reason why we campaigned so hard for this Select committee, because only a Select committee has the power to subpoena and force the witnesses to appear to testify. Police need witnesses to any crime to bring justice. So does the Benghazi Select committee. It is as simple and basic as that.

Chairman Gowdy promised that all witnesses would be brought forward and we regard that as a huge shot across the bow to all those trying to make this issue go away. We expect Gowdy to keep his word because he strikes us a true southern gentleman as well as driven on issues about which he cares. We also promise you that we, too, will stay on the issue to insure that the witnesses become the absolute, central focal point of the hearings. No investigation of what happened in Benghazi can fulfil its function without the full, public and unredacted testimony of the survivor witnesses who were on the ground and saw it all, and America has a right to know it all.

Stay Tuned.

As of this writing, the entire second Benghazi Select Committee hearing can be seen on the C-SPAN archives, HERE