Who knew hours of questioning in the drab chambers of the United States House of Representatives could capture so much attention?
Former Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared before the Select Committee on Benghazi last Thursday to discuss — yet again — if she had been involved in the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. The attack resulted in the deaths of U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The select committee has now been the eighth congressional committee to investigate the attack on the outpost, according to NBC News, and Clinton has now been testifying on the attack for more than two years.
What have these committees accomplished in all that time? And what is the point of the most recent select committee — composed mostly of Republicans — in questioning Clinton?
The Editorial Board feels the committee is a distraction meant to damage Clinton’s credibility as a candidate for president.
The evidence the committee acts as a sideshow is pretty convincing when Republicans admit it to be as much.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, for example, went on Fox News and said the committee is damaging Clinton’s poll numbers in the race for president.
Air Force Reserve Maj. Bradley Podliska, a former Republican investigator on the committee, recently accused the committee of being politically motivated in its investigation, according to Politico magazine.
It’s disappointing that a piece of political theater is the most effective thing congressional Republicans can find to do with their time.
Clinton testified for more than eight hours during the questioning, as Republicans continually claimed she denied security requests and she originally blamed the cause of the attacks on an anti-Muslim video instead of labelling the attack an act of terrorism.
Besides the uncovering of a private e-mail server Clinton used while she was secretary of state, no other lapse in judgment was uncovered by the committee or the seven ones that preceded it.
Some have claimed officials in Benghazi repeatedly requested for additional security forces in the outpost following the deposition of Moammar Qaddafi as dictator of the country.
However, the House Intelligence Committee, in the course of its own comprehensive two-year investigation into the attack, cleared both Clinton and President Obama of any wrongdoing, according to NBC News.
Clinton’s role in stating whether the attack was an act of terrorism or not is also contested, as United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice was the major figure who appeared in interviews saying the attack was the result of an anti-Muslim video and was not an act of terrorism, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Editorial Board argues that the Select Committee on Benghazi is merely a tool of political fear-mongering Republicans are exploiting for political gain as the race to the White House continues.
According to the New York Times, in one of Clinton’s statements to the committee, she said “I’ve lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been racking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done.”
If the numerous committees investigating Benghazi have proven anything, it’s that this statement might hold merit.
