A murky track record showing countless mistakes and blunders and yet despite all that, Clinton is set to become the Democratic presidential nominee
Former First Lady, Hillary Clinton always seems to dodge the blame, from the Libyan disaster to the email controversy, it’s shocking she is still allowed in the presidential race. When Hillary Clinton can study up, work out her one-liners, figure out the best way to deflect questions and fence with inquisitors she does well. She thrives, therefore, in a debate as a witness. She is the quintessential ‘A’ student.
Left to her own devices, however, she is consistently her own worst enemy.
Hillary’s campaign for the Democratic nomination has been all but concealed as media coverage of the US Election has been sucked into Trump’s black hole. Despite the remarkable support achieved by Bernie Sanders, the Jeremy Corbyn of the American scene, Hillary is widely considered a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination after Tuesday’s success.
This is astounding. Nothing seems to touch this bulletproof former First Lady.
Take President Obama’s recent remarks about Libya. The western-backed removal of Colonel Gaddafi created a space filled by Islamists, turning the country into a base for Islamic State and a lethal battery for global terror. Astonishingly, Obama laid the blame on David Cameron and the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Cameron and Sarkozy certainly made a mistake in backing Gaddafi’s removal. However, the driving force of the entire operation, against strong official advice that the aftermath would be uncontrollable, was the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
She brushed aside concerns in the intelligence community that the wrong people might come to power. She dismissed warnings from NATO and US security officials that Libyan weapons might fall into the hands of extremists.
Instead, she pressed the case of Libyan rebels and helped escalate the mission from what was originally an attempt to prevent a threatened massacre of civilians. She bears a heavy responsibility for making the world even more dangerous as a result of this fiasco. Yet in the wake of Obama’s remarks, this stain on the record of a potential commander-in-chief has barely been mentioned.
Urgent questions also remain about whether she did too little to prevent the attack in 2012 on the US mission in Benghazi which led to the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Questions about the attack and its aftermath have dogged Clinton throughout her second run for the White House, with emails released by the State Department contradicting several aspects of her testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the attack.
Clinton made the comment defending her push for regime change in war-torn Libya during the town hall event hosted by MSNBC.
Clinton acknowledged that the outcome post-Gadaffi wasn’t ‘perfect’, but touted the elections, which were an improvement from the former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. ‘Is Libya perfect?’ Clinton said. ‘It isn’t. But did they have two elections that were fair where they voted for moderates? Yes they did. Changing from a dictator that has hollowed out your country to something resembling a functioning state and even hopefully more of a democratic one doesn’t happen overnight’.
The Benghazi attack has plagued Clinton ever since, with multiple congressional investigations into her conduct regarding the consulate’s security and what she said in the aftermath of the attack. Emails from Clinton’s own server showed that she knew immediately the attack was not a result of a spontaneous reaction to a controversial YouTube video, as she claimed in the initial days following the attack.
While she was First Lady, she and Bill Clinton were engulfed by many scandals. These involved allegations of financial impropriety, corruption, cover-ups, obstruction of justice and even a death in mysterious circumstances. All of these were dismissed, of course.
Now, though, Hillary is ensnared in a scandal that would have instantly destroyed the presidential hopes of anyone else.
The FBI is investigating the charge that, while Hillary was secretary of state, she and her staff put national security at risk by placing large amounts of classified information on a private email server, itself a criminal offence, and subsequently deleted some of it when the information got out.
Although her former IT specialist has been given immunity by the Justice Department so he can testify against her, few believe even now that Hillary will fail to become the Democratic presidential nominee.
There is no greater manipulative tool in politics right now than standing up against those who manipulate politics. That’s what Trump has understood. The more outrageous, inconsistent or out-to-lunch you are, the more people love it. They think it means you really are what you seem to be. And that’s the neatest trick of all. Trump will use this as his weapon.
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