Hillary Clinton testifies at 10:00 a.m. ET before the Benghazi Select Committee on the 2012 attack by Islamic militants on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya.
Watch the live stream below (when available).
Hopefully, the Benghazi Select Committee will read Andrew McCarthy’s advice:
Hillary Clinton has done Trey Gowdy an enormous favor. In anticipation of her testimony on Thursday before the Benghazi select committee he chairs, and with a lot of Republican help, she has framed the committee as a partisan political witch-hunt obsessed with dashing her presidential ambitions.
To regain credibility, all Gowdy needs to do is demonstrate that it is not. Meaning: all Gowdy needs to do is focus on why the United States had its officials stationed in Benghazi, one of the world’s most dangerous places for Americans.
What mission was so essential that it was necessary to keep Americans on-site when the jihadist threat had become so intense that other nations and organizations were pulling their people out?
These questions implicate disastrous policy that was, very much, bipartisan policy: (a) withdrawing American support for the Qaddafi regime that our government was funding and allied with against jihadist terror; (b) switching sides to aid and arm the jihadist-rife “rebels” who opposed Qaddafi; (c) waging a war under false pretenses – i.e., working for Qaddafi’s ouster, without congressional authorization, under the guise of a U.N. mandate that only permitted the protection of civilians; and (d) transitioning from support of Libyan jihadists to support for Syrian jihadists – i.e., transitioning from the policy that has left Libya a failed state with a growing ISIS and al Qaeda foot print, to a policy that contributed to the ascendancy of ISIS – by among other things, abetting the shipment of weapons from Libya to Syria.
Getting answers on how and why these actions were taken is the business of statesmanship, not partisanship. It is a business for which the committee, to this point, has shown little zest.
Well, on Thursday, Chairman Gowdy will have the nation’s attention. It’s now or never.
