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Senate faults Obama, who vows Benghazi fix
Obama blamed security "sloppiness" in the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Libya as a new bipartisan Senate report faulted the White House.Obama told the NBC News program "Meet the Press" he agreed with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decision to carry out all 29 recommendations made Dec. 18 by an independent review board that was highly critical of the State Department for failing to identify and respond to security risks before four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi. The recommendations by the five-member Accountability Review Board, led by retired U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, included sending 225 additional U.S. Marine Corps guards to embassies and consulates and revamping how the State Department adjusts security at posts based on threat warnings. "My message to the State Department has been very simple, and that is we're going to solve this," Obama told "Meet the Press" in a rare interview. "We're not going to be defensive about it. We're not going to pretend that this was not a problem. This was a huge problem, and we're going to implement every single recommendation that's been put forward." Obama said a key review board finding -- that the State Department relied too heavily on local Libyan militias to safeguard the compound, leaving diplomats and other U.S. personnel highly vulnerable -- was similar to a finding in internal administration reviews. "It confirms what we had already seen, based on some of our internal reviews. There was just some sloppiness, not intentional, in terms of how we secure embassies in areas where you essentially don't have governments that have a lot of capacity to protect those embassies," Obama said. Four State Department officials were removed from their posts a day after the report was release Posted by: tipper 2012-12-31 |
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