Keller @ Large: How Much Do You Value Your Government Being Truthful?
By Jon Keller, WBZ-TV
BOSTON (CBS) – Did you watch all of yesterday's endless Congressional hearing on Benghazi featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
All eleven hours? Really?
Not me. I guess I just have a limited tolerance for the ridiculous, hyper-partisan behavior on display from both parties every time I did tune in.
And from what I did see, I seriously doubt anyone who wasn't already an avowed Clinton lover or hater will have their mind changed by what went on.
But there is something important to be learned from the entire charade. It's the answer to a question: how much do you value being told the truth by your government?
Well before yesterday, the record was pretty clear: the State Department continued to put out a bogus, self-serving explanation of what motivated the slaughter of our people in Benghazi well after they knew the truth.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
It wasn't an angry public response to an anti-Muslim video. It was an attack by an organized terrorist group.
Then-Secretary Clinton and her colleagues felt compelled to mislead us about this because it was seven weeks before the presidential election, and they were afraid it might hurt politically. Clinton's effort to deny that yesterday was just plain lame.
Was this the first time a secretary of state has substituted spin for truth on an important subject? Hardly.
I seem to recall Colin Powell doing it on the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
That fact doesn't make it right.
But do undecided voters really care, or do they assume that this is just what politicians do? The Clinton campaign's future success will help provide an answer.
