…because that House report more or less disqualifies her from any future political office given what it tells about her putrid performance in providing security to the CIA facility-cum-consulate in the most dangerous city in the world…

A congressional report shows security cuts before the Benghazi attack were approved by the secretary of state and that White House talking points describing the events were edited to protect the State Department.

…Despite then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s denials that pleadings from Ambassador Chris Stevens, killed in the terrorist attack, never reached her desk, the interim Benghazi report concludes that:

Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton. This fact contradicts her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 23, 2013.

Indeed it does. On that date, Clinton testified: “I have made it very clear that the security cables did not come to my attention or above the assistant secretary level where the ARB (Accountability Review Board) placed responsibility.”

The 46-page report by the five committees of jurisdiction cites an April 19, 2012, cable bearing Clinton’s signature acknowledging a formal request dated March 28, 2012, from then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz for additional security assets but ordering the withdrawal of security elements to proceed as planned.

After the attack, the talking points that became the administration’s version of events were drafted. But contrary to administration rhetoric, changes to the talking points were not made to protect classified information. Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior administration officials.

…The report quotes one email saying there was concern that members of Congress would attack the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings” regarding the mounting threat in Benghazi.

The report also says changes eliminating the truth about Benghazi were made at the behest of the White House and the State Department, and that the changes were made to make the administration look good.

The administration then sent Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to appear on five Sunday morning talk shows with the newly edited talking points and the bald-faced lie that the attack on the Benghazi compound was spurred by a “spontaneous” demonstration against an anti-Muslim Internet video.

“What difference, at this point, does it make?” was Clinton’s heated response when pressed why the White House long insisted the deaths of four Americans was the result of reaction to a YouTube video and not to an organized terrorist attack for which the administration was not prepared and tried to sweep under the Oval Office rug.

To the families of Christopher Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Ty Woods, the truth still matters and makes a world of difference.

Naturally the mainstream media – like for example NBC and ABC – have ignored this report. After all, what difference does it make, right?

Ace of Spades pointed out that the pretext for ignoring the Benghazi issue is the “non-secret” that we were running guns to Syria out of Benghazi…

Everyone pretty much knows we were running weapons into Syria via our outpost at Benghzi. This is supposedly “a secret,” but everyone and his mother’s uncle knows it.

The Administration is keeping the media in line, I believe, by feeding them a fiction that they were required to lie about Benghazi to protect this secret.

Except it’s not a secret. There is no one in the entire world who doesn’t know this secret. And when I say “know,” I don’t actually know; I am not privvy to NSA documents. So let’s say there is not a person in the world who does not strongly suspect that Syrian weapons were being facilitated by Chris Stevens.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. One can disagree with that policy, but one cannot say the president doesn’t have the power to order covert operations of this type. Certainly all former presidents have.

But what the White House is doing is claiming that they are only misleading, just a touch mind you, hardly a misrepresentation at all, really, in order to protect this secret — which is no secret at all — when in fact they are misleading people to keep the real secret, which their own incompetence, bad judgment, malfeasance, and subsequent lying about the same.

That’s why you have people like David Gregory grandstanding by demanding that Republicans answer the question “What do you hope to prove?” He’s attempting to bait them into saying something about the weapons-smuggling aspect, which Congressmen can’t talk about, it being a state secret and all (except it’s not a secret), and he’s doing that because he’s been spun that the Republicans just want to expose this secret (which is not a secret) and embarrass the president and compromise national security for shits and giggles.

No, that’s not it all. Everyone knows what was going on in Benghazi and no one is making an issue of that.

I don’t care that we were covertly running guns to Syria. I happen to agree with the policy. Even if I did not, I would concede the president has historically had the authority to conduct such covert missions.

That’s not the question at all. I don’t care about that. I’m completely willing to let the WH keep that secret (even though it’s not a secret), and so are Congressional investigators.

But that does not give license to the Administration to keep Hillary Clinton’s lethal f***-up a secret as well.

The issue is: Given that you were running a covert operation out of Benghazi which everyone knew about, shouldn’t you have put some goddamned security around your operatives, rather than leaving them to the wolves?

But the Administration will continue to lie to the press, that the only secret here is something unobjectionable (the covert arms mission), and that Republicans are Big Meanies for trying to expose that, in order to keep the press from asking about thereal secret, which is the egregious decision-making and lackadaisical attitude towards our diplomats’ and covert operators’ security.