SO, NO ONE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR BENGHAZI...

In the end, no one will be held responsible for Benghazi

Precisely the right takeaway from this morning's news about the reinstatement of four suspended State Department bureaucrats, and for precisely the right reason. There were so many strands of possible wrongdoing related to the Benghazi attack -- manipulation of the CIA talking points, scapegoating of the Mohammed moviemaker, lost opportunities for military action, alleged CIA intimidation of agents, and DOJ paralysis in pursuing the culprits -- that the most fundamental wrongdoing, the catastrophic lapse in security for the consulate, was often overlooked. Maybe that's a function of its comparative lack of sex appeal; the other elements all suggest intentional ass-covering government malfeasance while the security lapse was more likely due to egregious negligence.

And yet that egregious negligence has never been fully explained, despite testimony from whistleblowers that people as high up as Hillary's right-hand woman, Cheryl Mills, intervened personally to make sure people involved weren't speaking too freely. An ambassador got killed, as did three other Americans, and as of today the White House hasn't seen fit to sacrifice even a low-level staffer over it. Either there was something so sensitive happening at the consulate or at the CIA annex that the feds didn't want to call attention to it by installing a showier security presence or this really was a mind-boggling security vacuum in the heart of Libyan jihadistan despite repeated pleas from Chris Stevens himself to provide more muscle to protect U.S. diplomats. No one's been fired, no one's been suspended, no one's been fined. Mistakes happen. Next.

Tapper usually plays things straight enough as a reporter that it's hard to detect his feelings about a subject. Not here. Pure incredulity, start to finish. That’s where we're at with the most transparent administration ever.

 

So why won't even these four individuals be held responsible for their failures?  Obviously: "These people have real lives, real careers."  Unlike Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, of course...