I've been watching this stuff all afternoon while I do some writing work at home today.
I've found this session rather educational in respect to the inner workings of government.
It's an ironical session because Republicans on the committee are aggressive in their stance that there was a conspiracy by the Obama administration to politicize the attacks for their own benefit, when in reality the attack in Libya shows the limitations of a huge bureaucracy that is seriously over-extended in foreign nations.
It's ironic that the people who wish to limit the government the most are the most disturbed by the fact that the government is limited!
Secretary Clinton has been direct and forthright while, sadly, many Republicans on the committee continue to go on with their know-nothingness.
In one really stupid exchange, a Republican congressman kept blathering on about how the Secretary of State's office should have been talking with the evacuees at the time they were being evacuated in order to ask them if it was a protest that turned violent or if it was a more coordinated attack.
Sec. Clinton responded that the FBI talks to these people first, not the administration.
Then the Congressman simply repeated, "But you could have made one phone call to them".
"No, that's not the process...", exclaimed Clinton.
Another committee member grilled her on how her office never received the letter of the Libyan Ambassador containing security recommendations.
Why didn't her office get that cable? Well, first, we learned that millions of cables are transmitted to the Secretary of State. But it doesn't go to her office first. It goes through a process called the ARB, where intelligence people put the cables in any number of different categories.
That cable naturally went into the "Recommendations" pile. That pile isn't the most urgent pile of cables. What we learned today is that had the Ambassador sent an actual request and not a recommendation, that would have gone into "Requests".
And even that pile is the not most urgent stuff. What is? Of course, "Imminent Threats". The security apparatus of the United States, Clinton explained, still has most of its focus on places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then not least of all, the homeland here.
We also learned that the same congressmen who are blasting Clinton this afternoon have done their best to give this President as little as possible on anything, including not passing as much in security money as the administration requested.
We also learn that Republicans are all for the "Value" deal on contractors, which means we hire the cheapest rather than the best, to which Sec. Clinton said, "Well, you get what you pay for!".
What is clear from all we know is that there is no conspiracy here. We also know that Ambassador Rice had been given initial information that was still evolving. The administration did not make up the information, it was given to them by their own intelligence apparatus, who initially felt that perhaps the violence came out of a protest.
Well, when the smoke cleared and our intel got more information, the administration then repeated the correct information.
We do need to know what happened so that we can make things better, but Republicans are now debasing themselves by being trolls instead of men and women who put country first. It's kind of embarrassing to see them basically blame the Obama administration more than the terrorists who killed our people.