Lines Crossed

A British newspaper casts some doubt on the competence of the State Department.

Sources have told the Daily Telegraph that just five unarmed locally hired Libyans were placed on duty at the compound on eight-hour shifts under a deal that fell outside the State Department’s global security contracting system.

Blue Mountain, the Camarthen firm that won a $387,000 (£241,000) one year contract from the US State Department to protect the compound in May, sent just one British employee, recruited from the celebrity bodyguard circuit, to oversee the work …

“We were in uniform, unarmed except for taser guns and handcuffs, and had been told in the case of attack to muster by the swimming pool,” he said. “I was separated from the others and couldn’t get anywhere near the swimming pool before I was shot.”

That characterization was not helped by the remarkable testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary Charlene Lamb before Congress. She astonished Rep Darryl Issa by declaring “we had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11 for what had been agreed upon.”

Issa incredulously retorted that “to start off by saying you had the correct number and our ambassador and three other individuals are dead and people are in the hospital recovering because it only took moments to breach that facility, somehow doesn’t seem to ring true to the American people”.

The ever-perceptive Vice President Joe Biden can recognize an oncoming freight train when he sees it. During the recent debate with Paul Ryan, Biden laid the blame so thickly on the State Deparment that the senior editor at The Atlantic thought that Biden was leaving the State Department to “hang out to dry”. “Biden said the issue of diplomatic security in Libya never reached his desk.”

“We weren’t told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there,” he said. Rogin has confirmed Biden was speaking only for himself and the president, and not using “we” to include other parts of the Obama administration. …

Biden’s statement last night was the first administration one I’ve heard so far to acknowledge that some people were more responsible for that set-up than others.

Bet you anything though that if everything had come up roses in Benghazi that “we” would have included Obama and excluded Hillary. But in this case only Biden and Obama were blissfully unaware of the shambolic stat of the Benghazi consulate’s defenses. The incredulous Cable had to verify it for themselves. “Vice President Joseph Biden speaks only for himself and President Barack Obama, and neither man was aware that U.S. officials in Libya had asked the State Department for more security before the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a top White House official told The Cable.”

Two top executives are somehow not getting the word. Neil Munro at the Daily Caller notes that “administration officials are now blaming the nation’s intelligence agencies for the administration’s week-long campaign to blame a little-known YouTube video for the lethal Sept. 11 Benghazi attack.”

It’s a tight spot that Hillary is in. She can’t very well lash out at the President. It might cost him the election and the Democratic party would never forgive her. On the other hand, she just can’t stand there and take it — even if she deserves it.

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