When it was reported that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not be able to testify about Benghazi because she got a concussion after falling due to a stomach virus, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton termed it a ‘Diplomatic Illness’. Now, in an op-ed, Bolton continues to publicly apply pressure to Clinton and outlines some questions she should be required to answer.
Via the New York Post:
* Before the attack, was Clinton aware of the security threats to our consulate and other international presences in Benghazi? Did she know about repeated Tripoli embassy requests for enhanced security? If not, why not?
Libya was a centerpiece of supposed success in Obama’s foreign policy, not some country of small significance and low threat levels. It is important to establish not only the actual paper trail in this case, but even more importantly why, on such a critical foreign-policy issue, it did not automatically come to Clinton’s seventh-floor office.
* On Sept. 11, what were Clinton and Obama doing? We need a minute-by-minute chronology. When was she first told of the attack, and what was said? When and how many times did she speak with the president? What help did she ask for? Was it denied, and by whom? When did she retire for the evening?
* And in the tragedy’s aftermath, Clinton must explain how the administration came up with its story that the Benghazi attack grew out of a demonstration against the now-famous Mohammed video trailer. Clinton herself referred to the video at the Sept. 14 ceremony when the remains of the four murdered Americans returned home. On this point, the ARB was crystal clear that “no protest took place” before the attacks.
We’ve bolded that third bullet point because the detail found in the Accountability Review Board’s (ARB) report with respect to what happened on the ground in Benghazi is incredibly specific (except for the part about Tyrone Woods using a laser to identify the source of the mortar fire that ultimately killed him). This doesn’t appear to be lost on Bolton, who is calling for a similar account of what Clinton and Obama were doing.
The ARB report’s lack of detail in that regard – compared to what incredible detail it revealed about what happened half a world away – is conspicuous in its absence.
In fact, the detail of what happened on the ground in Benghazi was as compelling as the detail provided by the 9/11 Commission Report about how the first 9/11 attacks happened.
However, like the ARB report, the 9/11 Commission Report blatantly avoided implicating those at the top who were responsible as well.
Incidentally, Bolton was one of the courageous few who sided with Michele Bachmann for asking questions about Hillary’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin.
Abedin’s family is very well connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.