CNN news 2013-01-29 加文本

cnn news 2013-01-29

Hillary Clinton’s long awaited accountability moment in the murder of four Americans in Libya. These four Americans, Ambassador Christopher Steven, Geln Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith. Their name bear repeating. Their sacrifice deserves honest answers and meaningful action, not political posturing and some evasive answers. So Keeping Them Honest, are we getting honest answers to truly relevant questions and are those security problems that caused four Americans their lives actually being addressed. Last month a State Department Accountability Review Board identified systematic shortcomings and failures of leadership prior to the killings. Secretary Clinton says she takes full responsibility. Today on Capitol Hill lawmakers demanded accountability.

I’m troubled by what seems to be this administration’s pattern of misleading the American people and failing to hold decision makers accountable. Chris Stevens who probably knew more about Libya than anybody else in our government, did not see a direct threat of an attack of this nature and scale despite the overall trend of security problems that we faced, and I have to add neither did the intelligence community.

An emergency meeting was held and a cable set out on August 16th by the ambassador himself warning what could happen and this cable went unnoticed by your office.

It does cost money to pay for embassy security.

Since 2007, the department has consistently requested greater funding for embassy construction and diplomatic security, with the exception of 2010, Congress has consistently enacted less than requested.

We were misled that there were supposedly protest and that something sprang out of that…

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans (I understand.) 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.

Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables form Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it’s inexcusable.

You let the consulate become a death trap. And that’s national security malpractice.

I have great confidence that the Accountability Review Board did the job they were asked to do, made the recommendations that they thought were based on evidence, not on emotion.

So there’s no shortage of heat today as you just saw. But keeping Them Honest was there actually light?

With us tonight is chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper and former Bush homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend. Fran serves on the CIA’s External Advisory Board. She spend time with Ambassador Stevens back in August visiting Libya with her employer MacAndrews &Forbes.

So Jake, I mean this kind of hearings, it’s very frustrating to watch them. I mean, it just seems like it ends up being a lot of posturing and grandstanding. What exactly did we learn today that we didn’t know already?

Well, certainly there were a lot of questions that went unanswered and certainly there were a lot of questions that were buried in paragraphs of speeches that the members of Congress gave that allowed Secretary Clinton to not answer them. There are a few things that we learned today. One, I think I have never heard the State Department officially confirm that weapons being used in Algeria in that crisis came from Libya. That was long reported that it was suspected but it had not been said by the secretary of state before. In terms of the politics of this, I think we learned that this remains a big issue among Republican rank-and-fire that Benghazi will continue to be an issue but that Republicans still have yet to find a way to pin down any of the Obama administration officials for any tangible wrongdoings.