Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence went on the attack Monday, criticizing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her callous treatment of the families of Americans killed in the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
Pence also said that he would be meeting with Dorothy Woods, widow of Benghazi victim Tyrone Woods, a CIA contractor and former Navy SEAL.
Clinton was Secretary of State during the attacks on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, during which four Americans were killed. After the attacks, Clinton and the Obama administration initially said the attacks were caused by a video. After her emails from the time were made public, it was clear that Clinton knew that claim was false even as it was told to the American people.
On Monday, Pence said Clinton’s role in the failed diplomacy of Libya was mirrored by her failures elsewhere in the Middle East.
“It was Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who failed to negotiate a status of forces agreement in Iraq. Pulled all American forces out of the hard-fought gains in Iraq, that literally created a vacuum in which the murderous and barbarous terrorist organization ISIS was able to overrun vast areas that had been hard-won by the American soldier,” he said.
“It breaks my heart to think of the hard-fought gains and sacrifices made to win security in Iraq by 2009 in the way it was squandered. And the American soldiers being called on again to win back what it already had won,” he said.
“It was Hillary Clinton and her State Department that left Americans in harms way in Benghazi. And after four Americans fell, she told the families of the fallen that it was a result of a filmmaker in Florida,” Pence said.
“When Hillary Clinton was confronted about what she had said to the families, she told the Senate committee, ‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’ As a proud father of a United States Marine, anybody who said that, anybody who did that, should be disqualified from ever serving as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. I mean it,” he added.
Woods has spoken out against Clinton.
“It’s characteristic Clinton. It’s characteristic Obama,” she said in August, speaking to Hugh Hewitt about the post-Benghazi efforts of the administration. “You know, let’s go ahead and sweep that under the rug. It doesn’t suit what I am, the narrative I’m trying to present about myself. And it’s time to move on. Nobody can tell me to move on.”
“You know, I am not out talking because Ty died. I am here because of the way that Ty’s death was handled, the way it was narrated, the way it was ultimately handled with disrespect and negligence by both Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration” she said.
Dorothy Woods contrasted the difference between Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“… everybody, and this is my opinion, gets truly bent out of shape about how Trump says things. But time and time again, we’ve seen that Hillary is a woman who has repeatedly acted in a way that isn’t commander-in-chief like, you know?” she said. “So I feel like the media forces us to base our decision, base our vote on someone who sounds bad versus someone who has, there’s actual evidence on how someone has acted when the chips were down.”
Source: Western Journalism
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