الأحد، 12 مايو 2013

New York Times editorial: Unaddressed security issues are the real #Libya scandal

This editorial appeared in the New York Times.
Before last Wednesday’s hearing on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, Republicans in Congress promised explosive new details about the administration’s mishandling of the episode. Instead, the hearing showed, yet again, that sober fact-finding is not their mission.
Common sense and good judgment have long given way to conspiracy-mongering and a relentless effort to discredit President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The attack on the lightly protected consulate in Benghazi in September that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was a tragic event, and Americans should know the full story. The most authoritative account, completed in December, came from an independent inquiry, led by two respected and now retired officials — Thomas Pickering, a former deputy secretary of state, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Their report was unsparing in concluding that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels” in the State Department’s bureaus of diplomatic security and near eastern affairs resulted in a “security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.” Clinton took responsibility for the security failures when she testified at a congressional hearing in January.
Wednesday’s hearing, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House oversight committee, featured three witnesses who testified about those failures. One of them, Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, was at the embassy the night of the Benghazi attack. He said he was later demoted for raising questions about how the incident was handled, a charge the State Department denied.
The hearing did not prove anything like an administration cover-up or other hysterical crimes equal to Watergate that some Republicans, such as Rep. Steve King and Sen. Lindsey Graham, have alleged. Republicans have held numerous hearings and briefings on Benghazi and are threatening to hold even more. It is a level of interest they did not show during George W. Bush’s administration when there were 64 attacks on U.S. diplomatic targets or in the years they spent cutting back diplomatic security budgets.
The real scandal is that serious follow-up on security in Libya is going unaddressed. Congress needs to make sure that State Department budgets for personnel and security improvements are sufficient and that security reforms are put in place as soon as possible.
The Senate should move quickly to confirm the ambassador, Deborah Jones, whose hearing was Tuesday.
Congress and the Obama administration also need to pay more attention to what’s happening in Libya in general. After helping opposition forces oust Moammar Gadhafi, the United States seems to have lost interest. That is a huge mistake as militias threaten the country’s democratic transition and stability.
That surely is not an outcome Ambassador Stevens would have wanted.
 
 
 omaha.com

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