‘About Six Feet’
That’s The Difference, Mrs. Clinton
Posted: February 14, 2013
Sometimes it’s true that a picture is worth 1,000 words. Or, in this instance, a cartoon.
Syndicated cartoonist David Hitch’s “picture,” drawn shortly after Hillary Clinton’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month about the terrorist attack in Benghazi that claimed the lives of four Americans, boasts two panels. One shows the former Secretary of State posing her now implausible question, “What difference does it make?” The second, in which a tombstone is the prominent image, provides the answer: “About six feet.”
Mr. Hitch could not have known how trenchant this observation was, penned as it was 11 days before outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s blockbuster testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
We may never truly have all the answers about what transpired over an 11-hour period on Sept. 11, but Mr. Panetta offered critical and damning illumination on how the grisly incident was handled in Washington. Or not handled.
What did Mr. Panetta say? Namely that after a “prescheduled meeting” with President Obama at 5 p.m. D.C. time — or 90 minutes after the initial assault in Benghazi — neither he nor Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff heard from the president again that day. Not a word. And when they did speak to him at 5 p.m., Mr. Obama’s only instructions, Mr. Panetta said, were “do whatever you need to do.” The president, he added, left it “up to us.”
What’s this? A commander in chief opting not to keep his finger on an all-important pulse — that is, the worst terrorist attack on American territory since the original 9/11? Did Mr. Obama’s campaign trip to Las Vegas the next day take precedence?
But there’s more. Not only was the president largely uninvolved, but so too, it seems, was Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Panetta and Gen. Dempsey said they heard nary a word from her the day of the attack.
Finally, under sharp questioning from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mr. Panetta admitted nothing was done to come to the aid of our embattled nationals at Benghazi.
So Mr. Hitch is right. What “difference” did all this make? About six feet, or the difference between life and death for perhaps three of our folks.
Syndicated cartoonist David Hitch’s “picture,” drawn shortly after Hillary Clinton’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month about the terrorist attack in Benghazi that claimed the lives of four Americans, boasts two panels. One shows the former Secretary of State posing her now implausible question, “What difference does it make?” The second, in which a tombstone is the prominent image, provides the answer: “About six feet.”
Mr. Hitch could not have known how trenchant this observation was, penned as it was 11 days before outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s blockbuster testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
We may never truly have all the answers about what transpired over an 11-hour period on Sept. 11, but Mr. Panetta offered critical and damning illumination on how the grisly incident was handled in Washington. Or not handled.
What did Mr. Panetta say? Namely that after a “prescheduled meeting” with President Obama at 5 p.m. D.C. time — or 90 minutes after the initial assault in Benghazi — neither he nor Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff heard from the president again that day. Not a word. And when they did speak to him at 5 p.m., Mr. Obama’s only instructions, Mr. Panetta said, were “do whatever you need to do.” The president, he added, left it “up to us.”
What’s this? A commander in chief opting not to keep his finger on an all-important pulse — that is, the worst terrorist attack on American territory since the original 9/11? Did Mr. Obama’s campaign trip to Las Vegas the next day take precedence?
But there’s more. Not only was the president largely uninvolved, but so too, it seems, was Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Panetta and Gen. Dempsey said they heard nary a word from her the day of the attack.
Finally, under sharp questioning from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Mr. Panetta admitted nothing was done to come to the aid of our embattled nationals at Benghazi.
So Mr. Hitch is right. What “difference” did all this make? About six feet, or the difference between life and death for perhaps three of our folks.