Hillary Clinton Appeared but Did She Testify?

Hillary Clinton testified under oath on Thursday before the House Special Committee on Benghazi. Her goal was obvious -- defend her actions as Secretary of State during and after the terrorist attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. ~~~~~ The Democratic minority members of the Committee acted as her palace guard, taking every possible chance to paint conditons in 2012 in Benghazi, Cairo, Tunis and elsewhere around North Africa as dangerously volatile -- and to show that Secretary Clinton's actions were proper, professional and even heroic. ~~~~~ The Committee's Republican majority led by South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy tried to find out why the US Benghazi diplomatic compound was so under-secured that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans serving in Benghazi were assassinated and the compound razed, followed by an attack and the razing of an adjunct CIA building. ~~~~~ Republican Chairman Gowdy and GOP Representatives Lynn Westmoreland (Georgia), Mike Pompeo (Kansas), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Peter Roskam (Illinois), Susan Brooks (Indiana), and Martha Roby (Alabama) did yeoman work, trying to establish Hillary Clinton's pivotal role as Secretary of State when Benghazi went up in murderous flames, asking : (1) what she did and did not do that led to refusals to add security to the Benghazi compound and for Ambassador Stevens -- (2) what she did not do to stop the attack and save American lives once informed that an attack was occurring -- (3) what she did not do to stop the State Department, Defense Department, Obama White House and US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice from continuing for one week to blame the attack on a demonstration in reaction to a video film when she knew within an hour that there was no demonstration and that the attack was a pre-planned terrorist attack -- (4) what she did not do to make State Department documents and senior personnel available to earlier Democrat and Republican House and Senate investigations -- (5) what she did to hide taking Libya advice from Sidney Blumenthal, a Bill Clinton White House advisor and Clinton Foundation advisor with business interests in Libya, who was blackballed by President Obama when she asked to hire him at State -- (6) what she did to hide her official correspondence relating to all her tenure as Secretary from both Congress and the State Department -- (7) and what all the above had to do with the 2012 re-election of President Obama only 55 days after the Benghazi attack, especially because one pillar of Obama's re-election campaign was his boast that al-Qaida and related terrorism was defeated. The Benghazi Special Committee report will answer these questions. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Representative Susan Brooks asked Hillary Clinton if she ever personally called Chris Stevens from May 2012 when she swore him in as Libyan Ambassador until he was assassinated in September. Brooks noted that the Committee has found not even one such official call log. Mrs. Clinton answered : "I don't remember." That is the summation of Hillary Clinton and her testimony. She had total recall of State Department procedures and State's relationship with the Defense Department and CIA. She had total recall of her phone call to the president of Tunisia. But Hillary Clinton cannot remember calling her "dear friend" Ambassador Stevens even once to ask if he was safe -- presumably because she didn't care. And just as President Obama left the Situation Room on September 11, 2012, to leave Benghazi to his staff, Secretary Clinton went home, leaving Benghazi to her staff. She didn't speak to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dempsey or CIA Director Petraeus until the next day, September 12th. She spoke to none of the Benghazi survivors for weeks or months. When it comes to the avoidable Benghazi tragedy, Hillary Clinton, like Barack Obama, was Absent Without Leave...AWOL.