RUTHFULLY YOURS

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Last month, I retired from the State Department after 25 years of public service as a Foreign Service officer. As the Deputy Chief of Mission for Libya, I was the last person in Tripoli to speak with Ambassador Chris Stevens before he was murdered in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on our Benghazi post. On this, the fourth anniversary of the Benghazi tragedy, I would like to offer a different explanation for Benghazi’s relevance to the presidential election than is usually found in the press.

Just as the Constitution makes national security the President’s highest priority, U.S. law mandates the secretary of state to develop and implement policies and programs “to provide for the security … of all United States personnel on official duty abroad.”

This includes not only the State Department employees, but also the CIA officers in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Benghazi record is clear: Secretary Clinton failed to provide adequate security for U.S. government personnel assigned to Benghazi and Tripoli.

The Benghazi Committee’s report graphically illustrates the magnitude of her failure. It states that during August 2012, the State Department reduced the number of U.S. security personnel assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli from 34 (1.5 security officers per diplomat) to 6 (1 security officer per 4.5 diplomats), despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation in both Tripoli and Benghazi. Thus, according to the Report, “there were no surplus security agents” to travel to Benghazi with Amb. Stevens “without leaving the Embassy in Tripoli at severe risk.”

Had Ambassador Stevens’ July 2012 request for 13 additional American security personnel (either military or State Department) been approved rather than rejected by Clinton appointee Under Secretary of State for Management Pat Kennedy, they would have traveled to Benghazi with the ambassador, and the Sept. 11 attack might have been thwarted.

Donald J. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is racist. What seemed like an inclusive, inspiring call to national renewal really is a cry for Caucasian power.

How do we know this? Bill Clinton said so.

“If you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you?” Clinton told voters in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday. “What it means is, ‘I’ll give you the economy you had 50 years ago, and I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole, and other people down.”

But wait.

On Friday morning, Fox & Friends excavated several examples of when this divisive, cruel, ugly motto was deployed to whip up white hate by none other than . . . William Jefferson Clinton.

“I believe that, together, we can make America great again,” Bill Clinton said in Little Rock, Ark., in 1991.

Standing before a flapping American flag, with his appropriately white shirt sleeves rolled up, Bill Clinton addressed voters in 1992. He promised “to secure a better future for your children and your grandchildren and to make America great again.”

Clinton also looked straight into a camera that year and said, “I want to attack these problems and make America great again.”

“It’s time for another comeback,” Bill Clinton said in a radio ad for his wife’s 2008 U.S. Senate campaign. “Time to make America great again.”

Now that my Fox News Channel colleagues have hog-tied Bill Clinton with archived video and audio tape, perhaps he will dump his utterly absurd and disgusting charge that there is anything even microscopically racist, biased, or even snooty about the words “Make America Great Again.” This phrase is perfectly innocuous, and Trump is just the latest of many candidates to use it.

While Clinton, his wife, and their Democratic surrogates may drop this one foolish argument, they most assuredly will not stop trying to split the country with grotesque ethnic appeals and ludicrous “updates” on how Trump and the GOP are itching to advance white supremacy, if not reinstate segregation.

The Democrats play the race card, again and again, since it’s the last one left in their deck.

The Democrats cannot run on the Obama-Clinton economy, which is growing at an annual rate of 0.95 percent. The Democratic recovery is the weakest in 67 years. That is, since 1949.

The Democrats cannot run on Obamacare, which Hillary Clinton calls “one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic party, and of our country.” Premiums have soared 26.4 percent, on average, in the 14 states that have approved next year’s prices. Among 23 state-level Obamacare co-ops, 16 have collapsed, from Oregon to South Carolina. Health insurers are stampeding out of Obama’s vaunted exchanges, leaving Obamacare consumers with a choice of exactly one carrier in 31 percent of U.S. counties. (The map below notwithstanding, Pinal County, Ariz. had zero Obamacare plans lined up for 2017, until Blue Cross Blue Shield changed its mind and decided to stick around, lest that jurisdiction’s residents face no Obamacare coverage.) Miles from its stated destination, the Obamacare jalopy is careening into a ravine.

John Lester, the Air Force vet who buzzed Hillary Clinton at this week’s candidate forum with a tough question on her mishandling of classified information, is a smart guy. And that’s not the only reason he’s got me jealous. I have been trying since the e-mail scandal broke 18 months ago to think of a good example to convey the fatuousness of Mrs. Clinton’s “I never sent or received anything ‘marked classified’” talking point (which, as I explain here, she has now morphed into “I never sent or received anything with a ‘header’ labeling it ‘classified’”). While I’ve been spinning my wheels, Lieutenant Lester has come up with a great example.

He posited it Thursday in an interview on Fox with Neil Cavuto (aside: How great to have Neil Cavuto back, and looking so fit). Since I have a bit more time and space to develop Lieutenant Lester’s example, I’ll be more expansive.

Let’s say you are the chief executive officer (CEO) of a publicly traded company. You’re sitting at your desk when an e-mail from the chief financial officer (CFO) comes in. It says: “The company had a great quarter! Huge — way, way better than projected! Plan is to announce the results at presser next Tuesday.”

After a fist pump or three, you then e-mail your son, explaining, “Sorry, I need to cancel that lunch we were going to have next Tuesday. It’s quarterly-report time and my company’s got unbelievably great news to break. We’ve got a press conference that day to announce it. Gonna be a bombshell!”

Your son reads the e-mail. He picks up the phone and calls a broker with instructions to buy 20,000 shares of stock in your company. The broker buys the stock. Then, on Tuesday, shortly after your company holds its big press conference announcing far-better-than-expected quarterly earnings, the stock price zooms through the roof. Your son promptly sells the stock at a mega profit. He’s so thrilled, he even buys you that BMW you’ve been eyeing.

On these facts, which are hardly unheard of, is there any chance that the FBI, the SEC, and the Justice Department would not come a-hounding? Any chance you and your son would not be hit with a felony-laden indictment for trading stock based on confidential insider information?

Well, let’s think about this.

What if the FBI asks to interview you before deciding whether to recommend felony charges. You tell the Feebs, “Gee, I had no idea the information in the CFO’s e-mail was confidential. Have a look at the e-mail: it isn’t marked ‘confidential’ anyplace. In fact, there isn’t even a ‘(C)’ in the margin, and there certainly isn’t a big, bold ‘confidential’ header on top. How could I possibly have known it was confidential information that I wasn’t allowed to transmit in casual e-mail exchanges with my son? And how could I have known he’d use the information to make a killing in the stock market?”

Donald Trump’s so far successful presidential run has raised a heretofore unnoticed irony. On the one hand, the GOP establishment has long called for a “Big Tent” strategy to attract African Americans, Hispanics, even gays plus other “minorities” currently in the Democratic camp. Ironically, Trump has indeed embraced the outreach strategy but his target has never been on the “official” GOP outreach list, namely lower-class whites, typically with only a high school degree or, to be a bit crude, Hillbillies, trailer court trash, rednecks, yahoos, hicks, and others who Trump correctly calls the “forgotten men” of American politics (perhaps the least offensive name would be Appalachians).

Now the politically critical question: if and when Trump holds his farewell election — in 2020 for his second term — will the GOP establishment continue to mine, courtesy of Trump, this newly energized voting bloc? Or, with the iconoclastic Trump gone, revert to the more familiar outreach directed at blacks, Hispanics, gays, and women. Will all those animated white folk filling up auditoriums to hear Donald return home when Trump finally departs the stage?

Let me suggest that even if Donald wins in a landslide, the GOP movers and shakers (including it’s affiliated “donor community’) will shun those who recently waited hours to attend a Trump rally. The doormen at the heralded GOP Big Tent will find a way to send his enthusiasts to the end of the line.

There are two reasons for this upcoming divorce. First is social compatibility: the well-educated, sophisticated folk who comprise the Republican Establishment barely acknowledge the existence of these “rustic” white folk, let alone have any intuitive feel how to appeal to them politically. A visit to the RNC website displays multiple outreach programs but nothing for poor, white high school graduates (the closest targets “America’s faith-based community”). This neglect is no accident.

Actually, though blacks reliably vote nearly 100% Democratic, I’d guess that the GOP elite believes it has a better finger on their pulse than on the Weltanschauung of poor whites. Given a choice of hustling votes at a black Baltimore church, surely a low-yield operation, versus pressing the flesh at a weekend gun and knife show, the choice is no contest. Upscale Republicans have the black church script down pat — reiterate historical injustices, celebrate the strength of black congregations, quote The Reverend Martin Luther King, and propose a Marshall Plan of federal assistance to re-build inner cities. Indeed, the RNC probably has that generic, often borrowed speech on file.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-speaks-out-against-iranian-ships-harassing-u-s-sailors-1473477999

PENSACOLA, Fla.– Donald Trump said in this military-friendly town that Iranian sailors who make inappropriate gestures at American sailors would be “shot out of the water” if he were president, apparently referring to an incident about two weeks ago when four Iranian ships harassed a U.S. destroyer near the Persian Gulf.

The Republican candidate’s remarks were followed by roaring applause from the nearly sold-out crowd at the 12,000-seat Pensacola Bay Center and chants of “USA! USA! USA!”

As he spoke about building up the armed forces, Mr. Trump added: “By the way, with Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water.”

On Aug. 23, a U.S. guided-missile destroyer was in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz when four ships from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps approached at high speed and failed to respond to numerous warnings, according to a military spokesman. After two of the Iranian vessels came within 300 yards of the destroyer, the four ships departed. The incident was one of many interactions between Iranian and American ships in and around the Persian Gulf in recent months but one of the few that the U.S. Navy has deemed unsafe and unprofessional.

At Friday’s rally, minutes after Mr. Trump made the hawkish comments about Iran, he described Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as “trigger happy.” He said, “Personally, I think she’s an unstable person.” CONTINUE AT SITE

When Trump called Hillary a founder of ISIS due to her role in the destructive Arab Spring, the media underwent one of its ritual paroxysm of outrage. Heads spun around 360 degrees at CNN. The New York Times spit split pea soup clear across the office. NPR began crawling up the walls. And everyone who was anyone in the media agreed that Trump had been completely out of line in saying such a thing.

Never mind that Hillary Clinton had previously accused Trump of being an ISIS recruiter. There are different rules for your team. And now that the fifteen minutes of media outrage over Trump’s line passed, she’s free to do it again. And so, as a dog returns to its vomit, Hillary declared that ISIS is “essentially throwing whatever support they have to Donald Trump.”

That would be news to ISIS which focuses more on mass murder than getting out the vote in Illinois.

If the Islamic State is throwing its support to anyone, it’s the woman who helped get it off the ground. CAIR’s poll showed majority Muslim support for Hillary. But never mind the facts, ma’am.

Hillary Clinton claimed that ISIS said that it wants Trump to win “because it would give even more motivation to every jihadi.” Apparently Jihadis won’t be sufficiently inspired to murder Americans if Hillary is in the White House. They’ll just sit around eating Cheetos and playing Call of Duty.

But if Trump wins, they’ll finally start an exercise program and then blow themselves up.

ISIS got its biggest start under Hillary. It’s actually doing less well now that Hillary is out of office. Maybe the nation’s greatest living diplomat is underestimating how motivating she can be to Jihadis?

President Obama has just returned from a disastrous G-20 summit — humiliated by his Chinese hosts, stared down by Russian president Vladimir Putin, traduced by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte — and yesterday Iranian patrol boats were once again playing deadly games of chicken with U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.

Expect more of the same in the next 20 weeks: That’s how long Obama will still be in office. During that time Russia, China, and Iran will be watching the clock and will be tempted to make their most aggressive moves yet, knowing that his successor, whoever it is, is bound to be more forceful in protecting U.S. interests than Obama has been.

Indeed, virtually any president, including Jimmy Carter, would have been more assertive these past seven years. Obama, however, has been single-mindedly relinquishing or even undermining our position around the globe, as well as the position of our allies, including Israel and Great Britain. (Who else handed over secret data regarding Britain’s nuclear arsenal to the Russians?) At the same time, he’s given Russia, China, and Iran almost as much leeway as they could possibly want to advance their own agendas.

On January 20, however, that window of opportunity will start to close.

The temptation for the Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis will be to establish on the ground a series of faits accomplis that Obama’s successor will be reluctant to try to reverse, especially if military force or the threat of military force would be needed to dislodge or displace their gains. America’s antagonists will also be counting on the fact that during these twenty-odd weeks Obama won’t want to wreck his legacy by precipitating a major international crisis, particularly one that puts Hillary’s electoral chances in danger.

So what can we expect?

First of all, both Russia and Iran already have started their moves toward the finish line. We’ve seen Putin pick a fresh fight with Ukraine, one that sets the stage for further possible incursions into Ukrainian territory, and we’ve seen Russian planes using Iranian air bases to launch strikes in Syria — an unprecedented step in Moscow–Tehran cooperation.

Meanwhile, China has stepped up its provocative moves in the East China Sea as well as South China Seas, while its catspaw North Korea has successfully launched its first ballistic missile from a submarine.

But things could get even uglier. The next three months could bring a fresh Russian incursion into Ukraine, perhaps, or even into the Baltic states. Asian experts are waiting for a unilateral Chinese declaration of an air-defense identification zone, or ADIZ, in the South China Sea similar to the one it’s imposed in the East China Sea. That would sharply restrict the air space around the highly contested Spratly Islands. Beijing knows that move would lead the Obama administration to post a public protest and to repeat its calls for peace and calm in the region but to do little else.

As for Iran, its next move could be sending Hezbollah or Hamas sophisticated missile systems with which to threaten Israel; it could step up its support for anti-Saudi guerrillas operating in Yemen. The worst-case scenario would be an Iran-sponsored terrorist attack on Saudi oil fields, in the hopes that a shutdown of Saudi oil production would drive up prices of crude oil so that Iran got a better premium on the oil it would be pumping as Western sanctions ended.

Imagine a mafia don who wants to have some evidence destroyed, maybe even have a witness “disappear.” Does he have a sit-down with his trusted capos, who will then give the job to a reliable button-man? Not if he’s taken the Clinton Family course in advanced criminology — known around the campus as “(C).” If the don is a graduate, he knows the new way to get away with murder is to have all your orders communicated by your lawyers.

At the Washington Examiner Wednesday, Byron York had a very interesting report about the destruction of thousands of Clinton e-mails after Congress had issued a subpoena for them. (Obstruction of a congressional investigation is a felony under federal law.) The report is based on the FBI’s heavily redacted summary report of its Clinton e-mails investigation.

The e-mails were destroyed by a technician at Platte River Network (PRN), which had been retained by Clinton to handle her server. The tech is clearly a man (referred to as “he” several times), but his name is redacted from the FBI report. Evidence strongly suggests that this PRN technician initially lied to the FBI, then changed his story and clammed up about any instructions he might have been given.

A bit of background: In December 2014, Cheryl Mills instructed the PRN tech to implement a change in Clinton’s e-mail-retention policy: Any e-mails older than 60 days (translation: any remaining e-mails from Clinton’s time as secretary of state) were to be purged from the server. Purging in this context did not just mean deletion, it meant destruction: The Clinton team was using the BleachBit program to ensure that the purged e-mails could never be retrieved or reassembled. This was a conscious scorched-earth operation, headed up by Mills, the Clinton Family’s Tom Hayden — longtime consigliere and Clinton’s chief-of-staff at the State Department.

But there’s a Fredo in every good crime story, right? In this case, it is the PRN tech, who apparently did not follow instructions. According to his original story to the FBI, about three months went by when, out of the blue, in what he described as an “Oh sh**!” moment, he remembered that he had forgotten to purge the e-mails. So . . . he of course took it on himself to do it.

You’ll be shocked to learn, though, that that’s not quite how it happened.

RELATED: Even if You Believe the Left’s Excuses, Hillary Clinton Still Violated Criminal Law

On March 3, 2015, the New York Times broke the story that, while secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton had systematically used an unauthorized homebrew server system for all her e-mail communications, including the tens of thousands related to government business. This finally roused the House Benghazi Committee from its slumbers. (As I noted at the time, the Benghazi Committee had curiously failed to issue a subpoena for Clinton’s private e-mails, despite knowing of her use of private e-mail addresses for government business even before the Times report revealed them publicly.) The same day the Times report was published, the committee zipped a letter to David Kendall, Clinton’s lawyer at the prestigious Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C. (Clinton has a legion of lawyers, but W&C’s Kendall is her main outside-the-government attorney.) The committee’s letter demanded that the e-mails be preserved and produced. The next day, March 4, the committee issued a subpoena directing Clinton to produce e-mails from her private e-mail addresses.

Like a trio of famished buzzards, three ugly words have started to circle over Hillary Clinton: obstruction of justice.

After reviewing the FBI’s recently released E-mailgate files, House Government Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) on Tuesday wrote U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Channing Phillips.

“The Committee identified a sequence of events that may amount to obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence by Secretary Clinton and her employees and contractors, including her attorneys, employees of Platte River Networks,” and others, Chaffetz explained. He then asked Phillips to investigate Clinton and company for possibly violating 18 U.S. Code § 1001, 1505, or 1519. Making false statements in or obstructing federal proceedings can trigger prison sentences of up to five years. Destroying records in federal probes can cost up to 20 years behind bars.

Hillary now will campaign for president as the chant, “Lock her up!” rings in her ears — and correctly so. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York detailed, this case’s timeline demands prosecution.

On September 20, 2012, just nine days after the deadly Islamic-terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security sent then–secretary of state Clinton a request for any records relevant to the assault, its precursors, and its aftermath.

Clinton received additional document requests in August 2013 and May 2014.

On March 2, 2015, news erupted about the existence of Clinton’s secret, unsecured, do-it-yourself private server. The next day, the House Select Committee on Benghazi sent now–former secretary Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, a letter requesting that he and Clinton “Preserve all e-mail, electronic documents, and data (‘electronic records’) created since January 1, 2009” and in Clinton’s control.

As if foreshadowing Team Clinton’s actions, the letter asked Kendall to “prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, testing, deletion, shredding, incineration, wiping, relocation, migration, theft, or mutation of electronic records.”

On March 4, 2015, the Benghazi Committee sent Clinton a subpoena for “all records in unredacted form” related to Benghazi for all of 2011 and 2012.