The self-inflicted wounds of Hillary Rodham Clinton just keep manifesting themselves.
She has two serious issues that have arisen in the past week; one is political
and the other is legal. Both have deception at their root.
Her political problem is one of credibility. We know from her emails that she
informed her daughter Chelsea and the then-prime minister of Egypt within 12
hours of the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens,
that he had been killed in Benghazi by al-Qaida. We know from the public record
that the Obama administration’s narrative blamed the killings of the ambassador
and his guards on an anonymous crowd’s spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muhammad
video.
Over this past weekend we learned that her own embassy staff in Tripoli told
her senior staff in Washington the day after the killings that the video was
not an issue, and very few Libyans had seen it. We also know from her emails
that the CIA informed her within 24 hours of the ambassador’s murder that it
had been planned by al-Qaida 12 days before the actual killings.
Nevertheless, she persisted in blaming the video. When she received the bodies
of Ambassador Stevens and his three bodyguards at Andrews Air Force base three
days after their murders, she told the media and the families of the deceased
assembled there that the four Americans had been killed by a spontaneous mob
reacting to a cheap 15-minute anti-Muhammad video.
Clinton’s sordid behavior throughout this unhappy affair reveals a cavalier
attitude about the truth and a ready willingness to deceive the public for short-term
political gain. This might not harm her political aspirations with her base
in the Democratic Party; but it will be a serious political problem for her
with independent voters, without whose support she simply cannot be elected.