Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/30/fbi-recovers-30-hillary-clinto.html
…
Clinton could simply have used a State Department email address like all of her subordinates and then this wouldn’t be dogging us while we try to keep Trump out of the White House.
8 Likes
Gee, that is rather dismissive of a rather tragic loss of lives, including an American Ambassador. I mean 1 min of reading the right-wing rag of wikipedia you can find the very real and valid criticism for how the security at Benghazi was handled.
From the article and from the Senate committee report:
“In the months [between February 2011 and September 11, 2012] leading up to the attack on the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi, there was a large amount of evidence gathered by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and from open sources that Benghazi was increasingly dangerous and unstable, and that a significant attack against American personnel there was becoming much more likely. While this intelligence was effectively shared within the Intelligence Community (IC) and with key officials at the Department of State, it did not lead to a commensurate increase in security at Benghazi nor to a decision to close the American mission
there, either of which would have been more than justified by the intelligence presented. … The RSO [Regional Security Officer] in Libya compiled a list of 234 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, 50 of which took place in Benghazi.[63]”
Obviously a ball was dropped here. Now, was this Clinton’s job? I don’t know. It was under the State Department. Did she know about it? I don’t know. It could very well be she had nothing directly to do with it. But at the same time the FOIA requests and investigations into it I think are worthwhile.
The idiocy of using insecure email servers is another issue entirely.
Though even if there is an email saying literally, “Fuck them, they are expendable.” I don’t think it will matter.
4 Likes
In terms of crossovers between two popular storylines everyone wanted to see more of, this rivals Jimmy Olsen vs. Lex Luthor’s Pedicurist
1 Like
The Clintons have a history of creating problems for themselves… and then making the situation worse. 
3 Likes
have a fetish for it, more like.
4 Likes
The State Department email system wasn’t compatible with Blackberries, and Clinton didn’t want to give hers up. When she asked NSA if they could rig something up for her like they did Obama they told her to pound sand, so she went with her private server.
12 Likes
Coming up: Boing-boing announces new partnering deal with Breitbart.
3 Likes
22 hearings into 9/11 but only 21 for Benghazi? By all means carry-on!
Maybe you meant it would be politically worthwhile?
5 Likes
It’s amazing how few people care about the ‘accidental loss’ of over 5 million emails from the white house during the George W. Bush administration -with regards to the illegal partisan antics with regards to the appointment of federal judges, and the outing of an undercover CIA agent. http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/forgotten-private-bush-white-house-emails
26 Likes
I know right? Seven congressional committees can’t find the smoking gun that proves Clinton planned the whole thing? What are we paying them for anyway?
23 Likes
She hired a full-time IT guy out of her own pocket and set up her own encrypted email service and a server room in her house because . . . she liked her Blackberry THAT MUCH more than whatever the State Dept. wanted her to use? That’s a pretty extraordinary level of devotion to a damn phone, don’t you think?
5 Likes
They didn’t get the nickname “crackberry” for nothing.
10 Likes
-
I don’t know how many hearings were done. Great, they looked into it.
-
These emails, IIRC, are not part of a Bengazi investigation, but part of the insecure email investigation. So if they found something new, why not release it? It will probably continue to not directly link Clinton.
-
My overriding point is that the criticism for how it was handled isn’t just some right wing conspiracy. Though in fairness the over reaching accusations are.
3 Likes
The whole Benghazi thing seems like it was just another case of being unprepared for an attack. I don’t understand why there was any need to blame it on a youtube video or any of that. I guess we were still trying to spin the Libya situation in positive terms at that time, and pretending that there was no organized terrorism going on.
2 Likes
The entire email scandal is a part of the Bengazi investigation. The private email server issue was discovered as a result of the endless poking at Bengazi and when nothing from Bengazi stuck they switched horses. When the email thing burns itself out they’ll spin onto something else. The original purpose of looking into the server at all was to find all that secret information Clinton obviously had about her sinister Bengazi cover up. When nothing useful came up it switched to a more general handling of classified info/documents. Since that’s not panning out we’re on to the Clinton Foundation and her schedule of meetings. Almost the exact same progression White Water went through. From sketchy real estate deals to did Bill Clinton lie about a blow job.
And if IRRC the results of several of the largest Bengazi investigations pointed out that all the problems vis-a-vis security at the embassy were the result of sequester forced spending cuts. Effectively the state department was left without the funds to provide adequate security or provide military support to many embassies/consuls and was forced to patch the gap with private military organizations. We know what happened with Bengazi, in intimate detail. And what was found wasn’t politically useful for those spuring the endless, repeating, overlapping, investigations. Or reflected on them poorly. So what remains is bizarre conspiracy theories and shifts onto new politically motivated investigations. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t mishandling, doesn’t mean some of this shit isn’t unethical, stupid or concerning. But the endless call to “look into it” isn’t about finding out what really happened (we know) and isn’t about placing blame on those really responsible. Its about making nice headlines to tag a political opponent with, and that monomaniacal focus on politicking paradoxically distracts from any real problems uncovered during these cyclical scandals.
21 Likes
That one drives me nuts… the actual statement, as read in the hearings (over and over), clearly doesn’t do anything of the sort if you look at it in context. And yet they kept focusing on the same claim while repeating “evidence” that just didn’t support it…
2 Likes
From what I’ve heard State’s email is pretty crappy on functionality. Colin Powell used his AOL account because when he first became Secretary department email was internal only.
4 Likes
I read the short version of one the committee investigations. The TL;DR was: “Governments this big are unwieldy.”
2 Likes
I would have made more sense to just offer vague condolences to the family members, like they usually do. this reminds me of the part in “Wag the Dog” when they introduced a rumor about the B-3 bomber by saying that “It’s got nothing to do with the B-3 Bomber. There is no B-3 bomber, and I don’t know why these rumors get started!”
So she said on 9/11/12- “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet”
and on 9/12/12- “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”
and on 9/13/12- “Unfortunately, however, over the last 24 hours, we have also seen violence spread elsewhere. Some seek to justify this behavior as a response to inflammatory, despicable material posted on the Internet. As I said earlier today, the United States rejects both the content and the message of that video.”
The above according to factcheck.org. I don’t think I have actually read her statements together before. I wonder who wrote the “some have sought…” part.
1 Like
