A sudden coughing fit plagued Hillary Clinton in the middle of her lies as she gave testimony at he congressional Benghazi hearing on Thursday, As always with anyone named Clinton, examining the subtext of the situation helps to understand why such an inopportune moment would occur.
Can you say George W. Bush?
Apparently, the third time’s the charm. Clitnon had mentioned Bush twice before, sailing along without choking on her mendacious verbiage, when stalwart defender of the Clinton faith Rep. Elijah Cumming questioned her about her choices to serve on the Accountability Review Board reviewing the Benghazi tragedy.
Cummings slo-pitched his softball question: “And so why don’t you tell us how you picked them? Were you looking for yes people? I mean, what were you looking for?”
Clinton acknowledged that as Secretary of State, she selected four of the five members of the Board, then began lauding Ambassador Tom Pickering, listing his many accomplishments, while eliding his vitriolic hatred of the state of Israel.
Segueing to another of her selections, she continued, “I also wanted to find somebody with military experience, because these questions that have been raised about, you know, could we have gotten assets there, what actually happened with the diplomatic security agents, and Admiral Mike Mullen, who had just recently retired as the chairman of the joint chiefs was, again, I thought, the perfect choice to work with Ambassador Pickering.”
“And the message to my colleagues is that if you’re above a certain level, no matter what your decision is no one’s going to question it.”
Eric Nordstrom
She continued, “As you know, he was nominated by President George W. Bush – “
Cough.
“ … to be chairman of the joint chiefs. He served as chief of naval operations. He led NATO’s joint force command, U.S. naval forces in Europe. Commanded a missile cruiser, a missile destroyer, a tanker. He served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf –”
Cough. Cough.
A lengthy pause ensued, with Cummings finally asking, “You need some water, Madam? Secretary?”
Of course Clinton would cough at this juncture. As Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer posted in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attack, testified in 2013, State Department officials had asked for increased security in Benghazi for months, and those requests supposedly never got to Clinton. Nordstrom alleged that the Accountability Review Board never addressed the lack of communication, and concluded that the ARB was protecting higher-ranking officials, concluding, “[The ARB] has decided to fix responsibility on the assistant secretary level and below. And the message to my colleagues is that if you’re above a certain level, no matter what your decision is no one’s going to question it.”