Hillary Pilloried

Hillary Clinton finally came to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been chomping at the bit – some of them anyway – to grill her about the events that led up to the murders in Benghazi, and what occurred in the aftermath.

 

Consider this as background: many in the Senate were suggesting that Hillary Clinton was playing a poor weak southern belle who suffered from the vapors and couldn’t come to Capitol Hill – avoiding their sure and certain wrath of fire and brimstone.

Then she came to testify before the Intelligence Committee – an oxymoron at best - and gave better than she got.

Senator Ron Johnson (TEA Party – Wis.) set out to pillory Hillary by addressing the old “what did you know and when did you know it” routine – homing in on the disparate stories that came right out of the fog of war to our television sets. He wanted to know why these militants did what they did. No, really, that’s what he wanted to know, and Ron just couldn’t get an answer to his questions because he had either failed to read the intelligence report, or equally likely, simply wanted to score points rather than get some information.

“Do you disagree with me that a simple phone call to those evacuees to determine what happened would have ascertained immediately that there was no protest?” He asked.

And after a back and forth where Johnson clearly had no desire for information, Clinton blew a gasket and laid Johnson out on the carpet.

A word to the wise, start to worry when Hillary Clinton prefaces her remarks with “With all due respect…”

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this. But the fact is that people were trying, in real time, to get to the best information. The IC has a process I understand going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out. To be clear, it is from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice and then maybe we’ll figure out why they did it in the meantime. "

Johnson immediately backed the h-e-double-hockey-sticks down.