The most important information the American public learned from the Benghazi Committee Report is not actually in the report.
True to his word that the report would not be a partisan attack on Hillary Clinton or President Obama, Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) committee reported on organizational deficits that led to the destruction of the CIA station in Benghazi, Libya.
The gist of the report is that the State Department failed to plan for attacks on the Americans stationed in Benghazi and the resulting dysfunction.
Even the Democrats’ “CYA” pre-emptive report reads, “...security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate.”
Requests for more security in Benghazi leading up to the attacks were refused, ignored or not received.
It should be of no surprise that hindsight is 20-20, but the CIA should have increased security after previous RPG attacks on the facility. On top of that, the British and the International Red Cross had left Benghazi in anticipation of more attacks.
This is certainly not new information and a lesson for future asset deployment. These kinds of mistakes will also likely be made again by many administrations.
The fact that the military rescue was delayed by arguments over what clothing the Marines would wear is also not new.
However, we now know that the 3-hour delay... yes, 3-hour delay... to deploy Marines in their rescue operation was due to arguments between Hillary’s State Department and Leon Panetta’s Department of Defense over whether the troops should wear their uniforms (Panetta) or civilian clothes (Hillary).
They reportedly changed their clothes four times, causing the 3-hour delay.
Perhaps one thing we learned here is that Hillary should not have any say in military operations.
Amusingly, you can readily determine who the Hillary supporters are in the media by simply reading the phrase, “nothing new” in their stories.
Nothing new?
Yes, there certainly are new revelations from the report gleaned from over 100 government officials and 75,000 pages of documents.
Surprisingly, the committee learned that it was not the Libyans assigned to protect Americans who actually fought to protect them.
The February 17, Martyr’s Brigade ran away.
It was former members of Moammar Ghaddfi’s military who fought to protect the Americans.
This is no small factoid.
A year before the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, Nobel Peace Prizewinner Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton decided to lead from behind with the U.N. and kill Moammar Gadhafi, who had already been tamed by President Bush.
Leaving Libya in a state of civil war, one would presume Gaddafi’s military would prefer Americans to be dragged in the streets.
Instead, they fought to protect them.
This might be a lesson for the current or future administration to apply when rebuilding relations with Libya.
For Americans, these are not the most important pieces of information learned from the Benghazi report.
Important is the fact that Hillary told her daughter on Sep. 11, and the Egyptian Prime Minister on Sept. 12, that the attackers were “terrorists,” then three days later lied to the families that their sons were killed by “rioters” inspired by some “video.”
The most important information we learned is how the presumptive Democratic Party nominee responds to truths that are revealed from the investigation.
Sadly, her response has not been, “Yes, we failed to build effective communications between agency silos and, as your President, I will learn from these lessons and hire people who are expert in creating effective policies.”
Her response has not been, “Yes, we made mistakes planning for the obvious need for overt and covert protection of our people on the ground in an area where we should be fully aware of potential attacks.We are learning from this experience and improving plans for such potential operations in every location in the world where Americans are at risk.”
Instead, her response is to scream, “Lies!” and “A Partisan Sham!” “Discredited Conspiracy Theories!”
We learned that Hillary Clinton continues to prove she is not the person America wants to “answer the phone,” as she said, “at 3 a.m.”
In fact, she is not the person America wants to answer the phone at 3:45 p.m.
Rick Jensen is Delaware’s award-winning conservative talk show host on WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com from 1pm ---- 4pm EST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL