US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the Obama administration does not have the complete picture of the circumstances and details of the terrorist attack on its Consulate in Benghazi that killed its Ambassador to Libya.
“To this day, we do not have a complete picture. We do not have all the answers. No one in this administration has ever claimed otherwise,” Clinton told presspersons at the State Department here yesterday.
“Every one of us has made clear that we are providing the best information we have at that time. And that information continues to be updated.
“It also continues to be put into context and more deeply understood through the process we are engaged in,” she said in an apparent response to the Republican criticism that the Obama administration has been changing its statements on this issue.
“No one wants to find out exactly what happened more than I do. I’ve appointed an accountability review board that has already started examining whether our security procedures were appropriate, whether they were properly implemented and what lessons we can and must learn for the future,” Clinton said at the North Africa Conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
According to Clinton the terrorists who attacked the US mission in Benghazi did not represent the millions of Libyan people who want peace and deplore violence.
“And in the days that followed, tens of thousands of Libyans poured into the streets to mourn Ambassador Chris Stevens, who had been a steadfast champion of their revolution. You saw the signs; one read, thugs and killers don’t represent Benghazi or Islam,” she said.
“And on their own initiative, the people of Benghazi overran extremist bases and insisted that militias disarm and accept the rule of law.
“That was as inspiring a sight as any we saw in the revolutions, and it points to the undimmed promise of the Arab Spring by starting down the path of democratic politics,” she added.
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