What Did You think of Hillary's Performance?

[leahcim]

@Dewey_Finn

My guess is that this will end around election day next year, especially if she is defeated in the general election.

You mean Swift Boat Vets for Truth isn’t still making inquiries into John Kerry’s war record? Shocking!

[Jophiel]

@Renee

So what’s next? Are they finally going to let this die? Surely even Republicans are tired of this “scandal” by now. What’s their end?

Vox has an article comparing it to the “prisoner’s dilemma”

This puts Republicans who recognize that the focus on Benghazi is a costly waste of time in a prisoner’s dilemma with one another. No individual Republican has anything to gain politically by leading a campaign to make the party deemphasize Benghazi. Anyone who does risks losing support to other, more mercenary Republicans — or, worse, becoming the target of attacks from conservatives who genuinely believe there’s still some hidden truth about the attack to uncover.

But the best outcome for the party and for individual Republicans would be to drop the issue or, at the very least, confine it to the fringier parts of the party’s delegation. But if one Republican ignores Benghazi while another pushes it, the politician peddling Benghazi gets a political advantage.

[Count_Blucher]

She kicked those Hacks Ashes…!
(the only thing left smoking was Republican Rear End)

[VinylTurnip]

@doorhinge

Hahahaha. If you have a problem with the poll results showing that a majority of voters consider ol’ Hillary to be untrustworthy, you should contact the media outlets who published it, or the pollsters who collected the data, and tell them of your displeasure.

A majority of Republican voters seem to think Donald Trump is the cat’s meow and that he has a lot of really great ideas for making America really great again, but to quote Nice Guy Eddie, that don’t necessarily make it fuckin’ so.

That said, I consider ol’ Hillary to be pretty untrustworthy. Still not gonna vote for a talking baboon’s ass instead.

[stillownedbysetters]

@Renee

Had to see how fox was spinning this.

Headline: Clinton showed chilling glimpse of her soul at Benghazi hearings

Hahaha

You mean they actually admitted she had one? (soul, that is) :eek:

[davida03801]

@Chefguy

Your ignorance is showing (again). You have zero idea how the Department of State (or any other huge bureaucracy) works. It’s highly compartmentalized, with hundreds of contact points. Diplomatic Security (who I worked for over a four year period) is one such department. They are tasked with providing all aspects of facility and personnel security at hundreds of overseas consulates and embassies. As such, they have a budget to work with, and that budget is determined by Congress. Requests for things like physical upgrades or additional personnel are usually generated from the post’s Regional Security Officer (RSO), after discussion with the post’s ambassador.

ALL official messages from an embassy or consulate are addressed to the SECSTATE, but very few come to his/her direct attention. That’s because they have a tag line that routes them to the appropriate department or office that deals with the subject issue. If that were not the case, the SECSTATE would be inundated with every mundane issue on the planet. Posts routinely ask for more money for things like security. That doesn’t mean the SECSTATE sees them, or even that the post necessarily needs the money.

A truly urgent security situation would be the subject of a phone call between the ambassador and the Secretary. Since this never happened, she likely would have been unaware of the cabled requests.

Now to the notion of ‘additional security’. What, exactly, do you think that would have entailed? The only additional security that could have helped in Libya would have been personnel, and those personnel would have to have been military, since the DOS doesn’t have a paramilitary force at their disposal. Do you really think that the Libyan government would have allowed the US to send military troops into their sovereign nation as part of a permanent embassy staff? It’s hard enough to get countries like this to allow the Marine Security Guard detachments (which are minimally manned) in.

Now I’m sure that you will not let facts sway your opinion, but perhaps your uninformed rants would be better suited to a different website, where others share your lack of understanding.

A reasonable person could conclude that 650 emails requesting security upgrades for the Libyan Embassy should get the attention to the person in charge. That was Hillary.

The fact that is did not points to some serious flaws in management and or chain of command issues. It is the responsibility of the person in charge to see to it that the inner workings of the State Department brings important issues up to the top. Again, that is Hillary.

650 emails requesting upgrades to the Embassy in Switzerland that not get up to top I would understand. From Libya, I do not.

[Octarine]

While I think she did very well, I doubt this is going to change many minds. The best outcome will be some Sanders supporters warming up to Hillary a bit more, and maybe a few Democrat-leaning Independents being more kindly disposed to voting for her, but everyone else will just run with the interpretation most favorable to their party.

[septimus]

Hi Ralph. It sounds like you need to review this basic primer about the basics of Benghazi investigations. It informed me. It’s less than 6 minutes; I think you can stand it if you watched the 11-hour hearing.

@ralph124c

… Plus, lots of “ums”-she really sounded tired…

How many Dopers have been grilled for eleven hours? I haven’t; have you, Ralph? Has anyone in the thread? I think it’s easy to overlook the significance of this near torture.

The subjection of Hillary to witch-hunt after fatuous witch-hunt has exceeded its own flatulent self-parody. Kerry was defeated by Switftboating; if the GOP takes the White House in 2016 it will be due to mischief like this.

When you come back, please comment on the YouTube, Ralph.

[mhendo]

@septimus

Hi Ralph. It sounds like you need to review this basic primer about the basics of Benghazi investigations.

Objection, your honor! Assuming facts not in evidence!

Your post takes for granted that the facts of what actually happened in Benghazi, and in the communications between the Embassy and the State Department, are of some interest to ralph in his assessment of Hillary Clinton. He has demonstrated no such concern for the facts, in this thread or in plenty of the thousands of others that he has started.

[MindsEye_Watering]

Facts? How can rightwing goobers hate and fear properly if the have to use actual facts?

[Chefguy]

@davida03801

A reasonable person could conclude that 650 emails requesting security upgrades for the Libyan Embassy should get the attention to the person in charge. That was Hillary.

The fact that is did not points to some serious flaws in management and or chain of command issues. It is the responsibility of the person in charge to see to it that the inner workings of the State Department brings important issues up to the top. Again, that is Hillary.

650 emails requesting upgrades to the Embassy in Switzerland that not get up to top I would understand. From Libya, I do not.

You’d be wrong. Unless the ambassador personally sent them to her attention, she would likely not have seen them, particularly if the person screening them didn’t feel they rose to that level of alert. Do we know who generated the messages, or to whom they were addressed? Just because the ambassador’s name is on the bottom of all messages, that doesn’t mean he actually wrote (or even read) them. Without seeing the taglines, I can’t say who was on the receiving end, but I’m going to make an educated guess and say it was probably DS and the Africa Desk.

Every diplomat and functionary has a “read board” that contains the most critical messages received overnight. It can get quite unwieldy, even at the lowest levels. The DOS recieves tens of thousands of cables every day from everywhere on the planet, and it’s an enormous job to sift through them all. That’s why, as I mentioned above, the department is compartmentalized to handle the vast bulk of what are usually routine funding requests and other day-to-day business. I’d suspect that the most urgent of those requests were handled by the desk that handles North Africa. They may have informed the Secretary that they were getting a lot of traffic from the Tripoli embassy or the Benghazi consulate, but I don’t know if that’s so.

Also, if things were that dire and urgent, it would have been phone calls, not cables or emails. That may have actually happened, but we’ll likely never know.

[sparky_1]

The Republicans did a great job promoting Hillary for POTUS.

Well done guys!

[Maggie_the_Ocelot]

@ralph124c

Plus, lots of “ums”-she really sounded tired.

Are you talking about Hillary Clinton or Harriet Jones, Prime Minister?*

*Yes, we know who you are.

[Morgyn]

@davida03801

A reasonable person could conclude that 650 emails requesting security upgrades for the Libyan Embassy should get the attention to the person in charge. That was Hillary.

But the facility in Benghazi wasn’t the embassy, so even if embassy security was upgraded, there’d have been no change at the Benghazi facility, which wasn’t even a consulate. (I think it wasn’t a consulate at the time, right? They were considering it, but it wasn’t right then. I’m trying to find information on that.)

[davida03801]

@Morgyn

But the facility in Benghazi wasn’t the embassy, so even if embassy security was upgraded, there’d have been no change at the Benghazi facility, which wasn’t even a consulate. (I think it wasn’t a consulate at the time, right? They were considering it, but it wasn’t right then. I’m trying to find information on that.)

Your correct consulate, not embassy.

650 emails on 1 issue ignored points to problems on her watch. Does not matter who the emails were sent to, which department it was, which level it was reviewed at, etc.

[Chefguy]

@davida03801

Your correct consulate, not embassy.

650 emails on 1 issue ignored points to problems on her watch. Does not matter who the emails were sent to, which department it was, which level it was reviewed at, etc.

It also happened under Obama’s watch, and after all, he’s the capo di tutti capo. Why isn’t the committee harassing him endlessly? Because he’s not a political threat. If Clinton had decided not to run for office, these hacks would have packed up their ditty bags and dissolved the committee long ago.

[ralph124c]

I see her performance as well scripted and well acted. of course, she could not get into the real reason for why Stevens was in Benghazi-if you accept Sy Hersh’s take on it, there were several CIA (illegal) operations going on. The committee did not dig into :
-who concocted the story about the mob being incited (by the Youtube video)
-where the weapons of the Libyan Army wound up
Of course, such revelations would be highly damaging to the Obama administration, so they were not touched on.
Her tearjerker routine about standing there while the caskets of the four dead Americans were unloaded was most touching!:rolleyes:

[ElvisL1ves]

@Derleth

Do you remember when the Republicans were actually competent at assaulting the Clintons?

No, because they never were. Everything they’ve tried they’ve failed at. Everything. Even impeaching Bubba blew up in their faces, and left him with popularity numbers none of them can even dream of.

[Ravenman]

@ralph124c

I see her performance as well scripted and well acted. of course, she could not get into the real reason for why Stevens was in Benghazi-if you accept Sy Hersh’s take on it, there were several CIA (illegal) operations going on. The committee did not dig into :
-who concocted the story about the mob being incited (by the Youtube video)
-where the weapons of the Libyan Army wound up
Of course, such revelations would be highly damaging to the Obama administration, so they were not touched on.
Her tearjerker routine about standing there while the caskets of the four dead Americans were unloaded was most touching!:rolleyes:

ralph, there is nothing in your post worth taking seriously. Republicans were asking the question, how do you suppose she scripted her answers? Is she a psychic who knows what they were going to ask about?

The Republicans could have asked any question they wanted. Fortunately for their scraps of credibility that remain, they did not take Seymour Hersh’s conspiracy theories as fact. He’s a discredited journalist who either makes things up or will believe anything told to him. Relying on him for honesty and insight is now like looking to Grandpa Simpson for intellectual discussions on philosophy.

So why do you suppose that Republicans didn’t ask these explosive questions about all these things? First, because the answers aren’t in fact embarrassing; second, they were too busy asking stupid questions about why Clinton “allows” a personal associate to email her. They were far more interested in scoring points to be tallied in the election about issues of no substantive concern to Benghazi, as opposed to conducting an investigation.

Hasn’t the investigation into Benghazi now lasted longer than any investigation into 9/11? What do you think about that, Ralph?

[Chefguy]

@ralph124c

-who concocted the story about the mob being incited (by the Youtube video)
-where the weapons of the Libyan Army wound up
Of course, such revelations would be highly damaging to the Obama administration, so they were not touched on.

You mean by a Republican-dominated committee intent on discrediting her and the administration? You really are hopeless, aren’t you?