“What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Hillary Clinton famously and furiously demanded to know during Senate questioning about the Benghazi attack. That was last year, and finally, we’re getting some hints about the answer.
It turns out that Benghazi still matters to her, or at least to her presidential campaign. Her polling probably shows it’s damaging her — otherwise, Clinton wouldn’t have raised the topic at an innocuous event Monday.
During what was probably a paid gig at the National Auto Dealers Association Convention in New Orleans — she gets as much as $400,000 for a boilerplate speech — the former secretary of state used a gentle question-and-answer format to call the attack the “biggest regret” in her four years at State.
“It was a terrible tragedy losing four Americans — two diplomats, and now it is public, so I can say two CIA operatives,” she said. “You make these choices based on imperfect information, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be unforeseen consequences, unpredictable twists and turns.”
Notice she called it a “tragedy,” not a terror attack, and said that she regretted it, but not that she bears any responsibility. And the bit about “unforeseen consequences” and “unpredictable twists and turns” suggests she had no way of anticipating an attack that fell on the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
Documents prove otherwise, but since she wasn’t under oath, anything goes. And her mush was good enough for The New York Times, which swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Its reporter wrote that the remarks “represent some of Mrs. Clinton’s most candid about the matter.”
Candid and the Clintons — now there’s an oxymoron.