If you missed today's House Oversight Committee hearings on Benghazi then you missed A LOT. Over 7 hours of testimony by three incredibly brave whistle-blowers have answered some questions and raised even more about just what happened in Benghazi on Sept. 11th, 2012.
I was able to watch about one and a half hours of the testimony live and have since watched a few highlight reels of the hearings with the key points and moments. Here's what we learned today in a somewhat reasonable flow:
From the first moment the ATTACK on our consulate started, our officials on the ground, including Ambassador Stevens, called it an attack. It was never called a protest. It was never blamed on some random video. The video was described as a "non-event" by Mr. Hicks. The whistle-blowers confirmed the talking points about the attacks were in fact edited to remove any mentions of terrorism. We also learned that Susan Rice never even talked to Mr. Hicks, one of the whistle-blowers who testified today and the ranking United States official in Libya after Stevens was killed, before she went on all five Sunday talk shows and called the attacks a "protest" against a YouTube video.
Mr. Hicks said that decision was embarrassing and that it made the Libyan government so angry that the FBI was kept out of Benghazi for 18 days! And all that time the crime scene wasn't secured. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), read an email that connected the attacks to an Islamic terrorist organization the next day on Sept. 12th. And we also learned that the hospital Stevens was taken to was controlled by terrorists, by our enemies!
We learned these men repeatedly requested additional security in Benghazi and it was denied. We learned that there were special ops forces on the ground in Libya ready to go get in the fight and try and save their fellow Americans but that they were ordered to stand down. It is still unclear where or who that order came from and more hearings will be needed to get to the bottom of it. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, was also caught blowing smoke when he asserted that it would have taken 9-12 hours to get air support to Libya. Officials on duty that night told Mr. Hicks that it would take 2-3 hours but even that figure is questionable.
The nearest Air Force base to Benghazi is Aviano Air Base in Northern Italy, which can be found using the base locator I have linked to. It is about 1,100 miles from Benghazi. The base has a complement of F-16s.The top speed of an F-16 is 1,500 miles per hour and with drop tanks and a couple sidewinder missiles, the F-16 would have had the range to get there, hit a target, refuel on the way back via a tanker dispatched to trail the plane or planes and land safely back at Aviano. I will not believe that would have taken 2-3 hours and certainly not 9-12 hours as Cummings asserted. And even if it would have taken 2-3 hours, the firefight in Benghazi dragged on throughout the entire night! Why was no attempt at air support made?
As far as the cover up back here at home goes, the whistle-blowers today told the committee that the State Department tried to block them from meeting with members of Congress unless State had a lawyer present. At one point Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was blocked from a meeting, as he told Sean Hannity tonight on Fox. Additionally, Gowdy told Hannity tonight that after 8 months, he and the rest of the American people still have no idea where the president was during all this.
On top of all of this, equally disturbing were the open and brazen attempts by many Democrats on the committee today to smear and discredit Republicans and the whistle-blowers. Cummings was in all out "smear and cover" mode from his first words before we even heard anything from the whistle-blowers. Rep. William Clay (D-Mo.) had the nerve to try and blame budget cuts for a terrorist attack. Yes, because somehow money made terrorists kill Ambassador Stevens. Rather than ask any serious questions, Rep. Carolyn Maloney blew her entire five minutes on a hysterical rant trying to shield Hillary Clinton.
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who in mine and many people's minds shouldn't even be on this committee or in Congress at all, spent her five minutes attacking the whistle-blowers and trying to get them to say they were there for political reasons when they clearly were not. She accused them of lying when they were not. She also said, "We don't want to get involved in who down the line gets consulted." Rep. Holmes that is exactly what we want to get involved in! We want to know who denied our people help! We want to know who in our government is responsible for not fighting back while our people were being murdered! And we want to know why we were lied to by our president, our secretary of state and our ambassador to the United Nations. We will keep digging. And we will eventually establish accountability. We will get justice for Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
Jimmy Williams
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