Hillary takes one for the team?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/clinton-tells-cnn-responsibility-libya-attack-010005118.html

Interesting. I wonder if this is true or if she is just trying to take the heat off Obama?

She has no reason to be particularly loyal to him. He is her boss but they were also political rivals.

But ultimately, as her boss, he is still the one that has to answer for stuff like this. Even if he wasn't personally involved in the particular decisions.

If it comes up in the debate he can't just say, "oh that was Hillary's fault."

Damn -- she threw herself under the bus. What a trooper.

Sorry, that's not how it works.

Kudos to the Hillarybeast for stepping up to take the blame, but that's like the OOD of a Navy ship taking the hit for running aground- it doesn't wash, by law or tradition. The captain is ultimately responsible for everything that happens to/under his command. Obama is POTUS and CINC. The buck stops there. Doesn't matter if it's him, Bush, McCain, Reagan, or Truman.

Hillary can throw herself on her sword if she wants- there's only one person I hold accountable for the U.S. Government at large, and that's the chief executive.

Such loyalty from Clinton, though, is weird. Between Obama and Biden, the bumper stickers should read "Nyarlathotep/Howdy Doody 2012."

Eh, Nyarlathotep ain't shit compared to Azathoth!

Sure, when you already blame Obama for everything bad that's ever happened anywhere, what's one more thing to blame him for?

Hillary has no particular loyalty to Obama. But she has great loyalty to the party, and the last thing she wants is a President Romney.

I have been hearing for quite a while now that, after the election, she will step down. So the administration has very little to lose (Obama can always use the Reagan excuse now: "I didn't even know what was going on, so it's not my fault!"). I doubt that Obama told her to do this, and I doubt that she would do it just because he said to do it, but I'm guessing she did it to try to save the Democratic hold on the White House and, by extension, the Supreme Court.

It is also her way of saying she is getting out of politics. So all of those who are thinking "Hillary in '16" should probably get over it. It's not going to happen.

You are probably right but I wouldn't bet money on it. Then again, she'll be fairly long in the tooth at that point and the country's troubles will be an order of magnitude greater than they are now, regardless of the outcome next month. Simple arithmetic doesn't lie.

So George W. Bush was ultimately responsible for the 9/11 attacks, right?

I mean, the buck stops there, right?

Not exactly the same thing. That's like saying the captain is responsible for the enemy missile that hits his ship- that's not a matter of neglect (necessarily), but rather the fortunes of war.

These are subtleties that I wouldn't expect someone of your education and experience to grasp, so in a way you can be forgiven for them. The tragedy is that about half of the electorate is as fucking unsubtle and ignorant of reality as you are, and you vote accordingly.

If you can demonstrate that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by someone under the command of the Bush administration, then you are correct.

Otherwise, this is the most pathetic kind of reaching. Even for someone who has drunk the kool-aid as deeply as you, it is amazing that you could think there is any kind of equivalence between something done by those under your command and something done by those over which you have command.

Now, if you had said Bush was responsible for the failings of the security institutions that didn't react properly to the indications of an attack coming in the same way Obama is responsible for failing to prevent what happened to the embassy in Libya, you would be right. But since you know that a lot of posters on this board do blame Bush (and rightly so) for that failure, that would mean that Obama could be blamed as well, and you didn't want to go there.

So contradict yourself and tell me "I wouldn't understand."

Come on, you can do better than that. George W. Bush was CINC on that day. Under the standard of your own quote, he was in command of our nations defenses that day, and our defenses were breached. How is he not responsible for said breach?

If you can't grasp the prior post, I can't help you. My teenagers get it just fine. Sorry, dude.

Using your analogy, Clinton is 'captain' of the State Department and Obama would still be Commander in Chief. As Secretary of State, Clinton's responsibilities include our embassies and consulates. She is ultimately responsible for them. Was it her fault or Obama's fault? Probably neither of them, it was most likely a combination of factors and decisions within the State Department. It might not have even been that.

Kudos to Hillary for taking responsibility, but I don't really think anyone but the most desperate ODS-suffers were blaming anyone else except the attackers. Even with those "Bin Laden determined to strike" memos, I never blamed the Bush administration for the events of 9/11. We're seeing the same thing on a much smaller scale.

Sure...except I don't blame President Bush for what happened on 9/11. I blame the terrorists who carried out the attack. Kinda like Libya, right?

If there's evidence that some kind of decision about security in Bengazi reached the President's desk, then sure, blame away. But we both know the President doesn't make micro-level decisions like that. That's what a staff is for. And to hold the President responsible for every decision made by everyone in every branch of the government is absurd.

I grasp the prior post perfectly well. You're a hypocrite who blames Obama for an attack on a US outpost, yet won't blame Bush for an attack on the US proper.

And Timmy once again enshrines Obama as the Teflon President.

I'm hoping Marso is drunk, because that's quite the pretzel he's worked himself into just to be able to suck Bush's cock for old times sake.

Which, due to a hazing incident at Yale, is shaped like a pretzel.

Nope. You miss the point entirely.

I don't blame Obama for the attack on the Embassy. I say that Hillary standing up and saying 'my fault' in order to take the heat off Obama doesn't wash. If there is any blame to be apportioned on our side, Obama by law and tradition should step up and take it- just as Bush should accept responsibility for any government failings that led to the 9/11 attacks.

In any situation, the leftist never accepts personal responsibility or blame for any situation or negative outcome. It's always 'extenuating circumstances', 'external influences', or somebody else's shortcomings or failing that caused the end result.

TLDR: Service guarantees citizenship.

Apples and oranges? No, apples and dish rags. Sept. 11 was "something may happen to a major city soon involving aircraft" which narrows the field of possibilities to "everywhere" and there's no way to prevent it.

The Libyan Embassy is one specific location with a gazillion prior incidents and people begging for security because they know it's getting worse, and they are in the sandbox surrounded by potential hostiles.

Hillary's "confusion" was not shared by anyone but herself and the current administration.

\mo ij jugb

So, is the suggestion then, that the Libya attack was made by somebody under the administration's authority? Because otherwise, the situations are pretty analogous, though obviously very different in scope.

The situations are analagous, but that does not mean that Bush was "responsible for the 9/11 attacks" any more than Obama was "responsible for the attack in Libya." That was my point to actormike. Obama is to blame for the failures of his administration (not taking sufficient account of prior indications), as was Bush. That means that you can't say that Obama was innocent and "it's all Clinton's fault." But it also means that neither president is responsible for the attacks themselves.

Clinton took the blame, not for the attack, but for not being prepared. When it was pointed out that that blame falls also on Obama, because it was done "under his watch," actormike's response was that unless you can blame Bush for the 9/11 attacks, Obama is not to blame for the failure to act. And it doesn't work that way.

Don't try to make "Obama is responsible for the intelligence failure under his watch" equivalent to "Bush is responsible for the attack that happened under his watch" the way actormike did. Mike is as reflexively partisan as anyone on the board, with the possible exceptions of Liet and Oerdin. You are not. Don't fall into the same trap.

So, Hillary made that anti Islamic video? Fascinating.

We must be reading totally different statements. Actormike was responding to Marso, who suggested that Hillary can't take the blame because it is the captain's (ie Obama's) fault. Mike responded by saying that if that is the case, then Bush should be blamed for 9/11. It's an illustration by analogy intended to invalidate Marso's point, because you can't have it both ways.

For the past week the State Department has been consistently stating that they had no idea where the Administration had come up with this idea that the attacks were in response to that asinine video that had been seen by nine people before the attack.

Yeah, the rats were jumping ship, this is all Team Blue trying to get a handle on things a couple weeks out from an election. Chicago > Arkansas

@Gul, Yep, and it's clear as day unless you prefer NOT to see it.

Except I do blame Bush for the attacks. He may not have planned them, but they did have the advance intelligence that the U.S. was going to get hit with a terrorist attack involving planes, and he did nothing! Now the question remains -- was his inability to act due to sheer stupidity, or was it planned to take advantage of a crisis to directly involve the U.S. in the ME? Considering all that has transpired over the past 11 years, I think it's clear that it was done on purpose to further a political agenda of U.S. imperialism and expansion.