Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Ridiculous) took a step over the line today, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made him pay the price. Courtesy of ThinkProgress.org, the exchange between them at the hearings on the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed a US ambassador and others. Remember, Republicans are trying to make this incident (not anywhere near the worst in terms of attacks on US diplomats over the years) into some kind of statement on President Obama's foreign policy. ThinkProgress reports:
When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) asked Clinton why she didn’t make “a simple phone call” to the evacuees to find out [whether the attcks were caused by a protest over an anti-Islan video shown in the US], the Secretary of State shot back: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans!” she said, “What difference does it make?”:
JOHNSON: Madam Secretary, do you disagree that a simple phone call to those evacuees to determined what happened would have ascertained immediately there was no protest? That was a piece of information that could have been easily, easily obtained. within hours if not days.
CLINTON: Senator, you know, when you’re in these positions, the last thing you want to do is interfere with any other process.
JOHNSON: I realize that. I realize it’s a good excuse.
CLINTON: No it’s a fact. [...]
JOHNSON: Again, we were mislead there was supposedly protests and something spraying out of that, assault spraying out of that. That was easily ascertained that was not the fact and the American people could have known that within days and didn’t know that.
CLINTON: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans?! What difference at this point does it make?! It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.
Watch the video of the complete exchange here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nPal5FfBaaE
