RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton’s brief and lackluster tenure as secretary of state can best be summed up as scandal-ridden. But of all the scandals swirling around the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, none resonates more than the Benghazi fiasco, which resulted in the needless deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the first U.S. ambassador to die in the line of duty since 1979.

After 25 months of work which included interviews with over 100 witnesses and the examination of thousands of documents and emails, including those obtained off Clinton’s unsecured bathroom server, the Select Committee on Benghazi has finally released its lengthy report which includes detailed findings that reflect poorly on the Obama White House and Ms. Clinton. Among its many damning conclusions, the report portrays a deceitful administration obsessed with pushing a false narrative on to the American people in an effort to deflect attention away from the administration’s glaring foreign policy failings.

The September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi came just 56 days before the general election at a sensitive time when Obama’s reelection campaign was in full swing. At the time, Obama was touting his “success” in liquidating Osama Bin Laden and was pushing the storyline that Al-Qaida was retreating and the worldwide terror threat was diminishing. But the well-organized, well-planned Benghazi terrorist assault, likely timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks, threw a wrench in Obama’s narrative, shattering the mendacious tale he was peddling.

The delay in deploying military assets to the theater, attributed by the committee to needless bureaucratic bungling, almost certainly cost those men their lives. The committee also found that some two-dozen people, who were saved during the assault, were rescued with the assistance of a unit known as the Libyan Military Intelligence, which was composed of fighters and officers loyal to the regime headed by the deposed Qaddafi. In other words, the army that the Obama/Clinton duo helped defeat was also instrumental in saving Americans, a bitter irony.

There were many more failings, but the one that stands out is the administration’s dishonesty in leveling with the American people about the cause of the attack. A devastating terrorist attack during a close, no holds barred election campaign, where the administration had few if any foreign policy successes, ran contrary to the narrative spun by Obama and his minions and had the potential to derail his campaign. A fable thus had to be conjured up in an effort to deflect attention away from the administration’s failings and it centered on an obscure YouTube video that denigrated the Muslim prophet, Mohammed.

Clinton, supported by Ambassador Susan Rice and White House adviser Ben Rhodes, acted as Obama’s point man on the issue, spreading the fabrication far and wide. But private communications between Clinton and her inner circle show that she was well aware of the fact that the consulate attack was a well-orchestrated assault that had nothing to do with an internet video or protests in Cairo.

On the day of the attack, Clinton emailed her daughter noting that “two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Quedalike [sic] group.” The email contained no reference to an internet video or spontaneous protests in Benghazi or elsewhere. Other internal emails, memos and phone calls to foreign leaders, White House and State Department staff were similarly devoid of such references but did unambiguously attribute blame for the attack on Al-Qaida or its affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia.

Intelligence analysts quickly assessed that the Benghazi attack was not a spontaneous, angry eruption over a video and passed that information along but the false narrative continued to be peddled over every forum and venue. Incredibly, four days after the attack, Ambassador Rice – the Obama shill who infamously stated that Bowe Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction” – mendaciously noted on Fox News With Chris Wallace that “we don’t see at this point signs this was a coordinated plan, premeditated attack.” That bald-faced lie was patently contradicted all intelligence assessments issued by a number of different agencies.

Not to be outdone, on September 14, Obama adviser and Iran deal peddler Ben Rhodes sent an email that highlights the administration’s mendacity and the lengths to which it went to perpetrate its fraud against the American people. Under the heading of “Goals,” Rhodes wrote, “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

Politics of course is a very dirty business but what Clinton did in connection with the Benghazi fraud far exceeds the unethical behavior of her colleagues – she directly lied to the families of the victims while looking at them square in the eye. She told the father of Tyrone Woods that “we are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of [your] son.” To the mother of Sean Smith she told a similar fabrication noting that her son was murdered because of a video.

Only the most heartless and callous of people could display such mendacity but Clinton has a penchant for such repugnant conduct. Of course, die-hard Leftists and their allies within certain quarters of the mainstream media will attempt to downplay the report’s findings. The New York Times is already absurdly claiming that the report exonerates Clinton of wrongdoing but nothing could be further from the truth.

The report depicts a coldhearted woman who lied to the media, lied to the American people and worst of all, lied to the families of the victims, all in an effort to get her dishonest and feckless boss reelected. Clinton already suffers from trust issues with the electorate. Whether this damning report will further impact the electorate’s feelings toward her and negatively affect her election bid remains to be seen.