In anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s book, “Hard Choices,” being released next week, the right-wing group America Rising released a nine-page attack on Clinton today consisting of recycled attacks already addressed, debunked and verified inaccurate.
Today’s attack was a chapter from Rising’s eBook. If this “chapter” is any evidence, the eBook will have as many credibility problems as Rising’s string of recent false attacks.
FALSE ATTACK: The lengthy missive tries in vain to suggest that being aware Benghazi was a dangerous place, Americans and the State Department, specifically Secretary Clinton, should have resigned American interests in the hostile environment and pulled out.
DEBUNKED DECEMBER 2012: As the Accountability Review concluded after conducting the most thorough, non-partisan investigation of Benghazi, “The Benghazi attacks took place against a backdrop of significantly increased demands on U.S. diplomats to be present in the world’s most dangerous places to advance American interests and connect with populations beyond capitals, and beyond host governments’ reach… No diplomatic presence is without risk, given past attempts by terrorists to pursue U.S. targets worldwide. And the total elimination of risk is a non-starter for U.S. diplomacy, given the need for the U.S. government to be present in places where stability and security are often most profoundly lacking and host government support is sometimes minimal to non-existent.” [Accountability Review Board, December 2012, page 2]
DEBUNKED AGAIN JANUARY 2013: “Nobody knew the dangers better than Chris — first, during the revolution, then during the transition. A weak Libyan government, marauding militias, terrorist groups, a bomb exploded in the parking lot of his hotel, but he did not waver, because he understood it was critical for American to be represented there at that time. Our men and women who serve overseas understand that we accept a level of risk to protect the country we love. And they represent the best traditions of a bold and generous nation. They cannot work in bunkers and do their jobs…. It has been one of the great honors of my life to lead the men and women of the State Department and USAID, nearly 70,000 serving here in Washington, more than 270 posts around the world. They get up and get to work every day, often in difficult and dangerous circumstances, because they believe, as we believe, the United States is the most extraordinary force for peace and progress the world has ever known.” [Clinton Testimony, Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, 1/23/13]
FALSE ATTACK: Politicizing painful details of the tragedy, right-wing operatives attempt and fail to blame Hillary Clinton personally for any shortcomings in security or equipment at the Benghazi facility.
DEBUNKED JANUARY 2013: Secretary Clinton was not aware about the request for additional security, nor did she know about the decision to turn down any request. In her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary Clinton stated: “I didn’t see those requests. They didn’t come to me. I didn’t approve them. I didn’t deny them.” [Clinton testimony, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1/23/13]
DEBUNKED AGAIN APRIL 2013: Washington Post Fact-Checker: The claim that Clinton denied funding is “absurd” and a “whopper.”“One of the headline items in the [House Republican] report was the claim that an April 19, 2012, State Department cable acknowledged a request from the embassy in Libya for additional security assets but ordered that a planned drawdown would proceed as scheduled. ‘The cable response to Tripoli bears Secretary Clinton’s signature,’ the report said, referring to the message as ‘the April cable from Clinton.’ […] [Congressman Darrell] Issa presented this as a ‘gotcha’ moment, but it relies on an absurd understanding of the word ‘signature.’ […] [T]he State Department is a vast organization and even office directors can send out a cable that ends up with the secretary’s ‘signature.’ At this point, Issa has no basis or evidence to show that Clinton had anything to do with this cable — any more than she personally approved a cable on proper e-mail etiquette. The odds are extremely long that Clinton ever saw or approved this memo, giving us confidence that his inflammatory and reckless language qualifies as a ‘whopper.’” [‘Issa’s absurd claim that Clinton’s ‘signature’ means she personally approved it,’ Washington Post, 4/25/13]
FALSE ATTACK: These right-wing attacks attempt to cherry-pick from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs report to offset the lacking credibility of their allegations. However, the Committee report noted exactly the opposite of the right-wing allegations: that the attack should have been anticipated, and the role that protests over a controversial video may have played in the attack.
DEBUNKED DECEMBER 2012: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs: The “U.S. government did not have specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.” [Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, 12/30/12, page 7]
DEBUNKED AGAIN DECEMBER 2012: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:“The IC’s [intelligence community’s] preliminary conclusion was that there had been a protest outside of the mission prior to the attack, making this assessment based on open source news reports and on other information available to intelligence agencies.” [Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 12/30/12, page 28]