No offense, but you *really *don’t know how a big bureaucracy works, do you?
I get 200 work emails per day. I don’t want to even think about how many emails the head of my group gets per day directly or on ccmail. If you count ccmail, it’s got to be hundreds if not thousands per day.
I send one email for help out to 10 people, copy 10 people on it, within 24 hours it can easily have looped in dozens more people, spawned a couple of spin offs…
unless it was 650 emails direct to Hillary, the chance of a even single email getting through to Hillary is pretty low.
The committee questions her for 11 hours with barely a break, asking some of the most ridiculous questions imaginable, and following a dishonest script clearly designed to be as damaging as possible both to the current administration and to Hillary Clinton, and our dedicated OP sees this as evidence of going easy on Obama.
The level of cognitive dissonance that we’re dealing with here is staggering.
It’s sad that our “conservative” friends allow themselves to be such bad sports.
Please, just take your ball and go home. Your side lost. Get over it, regroup, and try again. Stop always trying to win by pointing out the flaws of the other side.
I know the f**king drill as i do about 125 a day. I have a form of triage. 1/3 are either deleted or passed by. 1/3 are passed off to others to take care of. The final 1/3 I have to deal with. Most a short reply. Finally about 10 a day require a more detail response of some sort.
I also know how to read a few sentences and decide the degree of response.
Libya is Indian country with lots of bad guys, it is not peaceful place. I also have to assume that security types hired by the State Department to protect an Embassy or Consulates are professionals and know their business. I also assume their are professionals in the security department at the State Department who are the ones that initially receive the emails. Therefore if a series of emails are coming from Libya, saying this consulate security if not up to standards it should receive a bit more attention than others. It should have gone up the ladder and it did not. Therefore problem.
Once again I said a reasonable person would conclude there is a problem here of some sort. An unreasonable person, or one with an agenda, would blow it off as not an issue.
Addressing your first point, only if 650 letters (over whatever timeframe they were sent) indicated an unusual number of requests, and if the requests had a sensible underlying reason behind them.
On your second point, what kind of agenda would the SoS have to knowingly keep one of their less prominent locations under-defended?
And here is exactly where the criticism breaks down. As I understand it, the requests included proposals for adding a couple of additional security people.
Does anyone think that having three additional armed security agents would have made a difference at Benghazi, what with a hundred extremist militiamen storming the compound? I’m not even sure if ten or fifteen additional agents would really have made a difference, to be honest. Just watch the videos, and remember that outside the compound were many more attackers who just didn’t go inside.
I’m not trying to excuse Clinton’s hand in this for partisan reasons. Some terrorist attacks we can stop, some we can’t. If we have people out there in dangerous territory, we can’t expect to make them perfectly safe, but we can probably do better in various ways.
But a question for those who don’t agree with me: what do you think is a bigger deal: the truck bombing in Lebanon that killed 241 Marines, or this? Why does this episode get made out to be a bigger failure than Reagan’s in failing to stop that terrorist attack?
I’m not sure. But three additional people would have made a huge difference at Ft. Hood, with one crazy person attacking. What the fuck was Obama thinking? And who got to Issa to keep him from having hearings about it?
It’s funny how the Pubbies are always calling Dems naive about the world, and yet they expect perfect safety in a war-torn Libya.
I’m not sure what the big deal is. Waiting Room was a pretty good song, and Repeater was an awesome album, but it’s all kind of old news now. MacKaye is the ultimate non-sellout, but what has he done lately?
Wait, was she tired and “Umming” a lot, or was it well scripted and acted?
Close, but no cigar. They probably have not dug into the CIA for Benghazi because that would involve having the former head of the CIA, right wing hero General David Petraeus, testifying before congress.
I haven’t seen the 650 emails, so I don’t really know. But I do know emails, and it is not hard to get a whole bunch on one subject.
DC: Hey, Libya, how’s security over there?
Libya: Pretty good, but we could use more security on the perimiter?
DC: what do you have in mind?
Libya: How about some of those big flower pots for the sidewalk to stop car bombs?
DC: Great idea, how many do you need?
LIbya: I don’t know 12 should do it.
DC: Ok, we’ll see if we can get approval for that.
Libya: Thanks so much, maybe a few extra guards for the ambassador’s dinner?
DC: Sure, how many?
Etc etc etc.
10 emails right there, and none would get the attention of Mrs. Clinton, I would expect.
On the other hand, these could have been *Urgent and important memorandum of great import *asking for immediate assistance due to huge security problems. I haven’t heard them described that way.
Email has made inundation the norm. I’m assuming that ‘cables’ have probably gone by the wayside in favor of faster communication. When those were the norm, traffic would have been far, far less than the 650 number. And you’re right: security requests range from “we need more replacement locks and a couple of motion sensor heads” to “Holy shit! Incoming!”
One last time, with feeling: Truly urgent need-help-now requests would have come by phone and directly from the ambassador to the SOS. That’s not the sort of thing that you wait to see if it winds its way up through the bureaucracy for resolution. No SOS would ignore that type of personal call, as the ambo’s next phone call would be to the White House.