By Rolf Yungclas —— Bio and Archives July 18, 2016
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“ ‘When ten different instances occurred when President Bush was in office where American diplomatic personnel were killed in, in – around the world, how many outraged Republican members of Congress were there?’ Clinton asked during NBC Meet the Press interview on Sunday. “ ‘Zero,’ he added. “Unstated by the former president, however, was the fact that those U.S. diplomatic personnel who were killed during the George W. Bush administration died in circumstances other than an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission:We can say that every President in modern times has had numerous instances of deaths at U.S. facilities or during U.S.-sponsored activities in foreign countries. And if we count the number of American people killed in wars during Presidential administrations, deaths would add up to tens of thousands per President in the Mexican War (13,203), the Korean War (56,246), the Vietnam War (90,220), and World War I (116,516), and hundreds of thousands in the Civil War (498,332) and World War II (405,399). So the point isn’t to simply wanting to assign blame to Ms. Clinton and President Obama for the number killed during the Benghazi attack. The attack could have led to the death of dozens of Americans and those working for the Americans, yet there is no indication that Clinton and Obama did what you or I would have done, staying up all night or following minute-by-minute what was going on, attempting to expedite a rescue. They never even got a flyover by American aircraft OK’d to try and scare the attackers away! If you haven’t seen the movie 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, please see it. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so emotionally invested in a movie. It’s one of the most compelling movies I’ve seen in a long time. Soldiers were readied to be flown in but they never went. Fighter jets were available to be scrambled. And we’re told by the Obama administration and Democrat Party leadership that all the investigation that needs to be done has been done. A President that came into office with promises of transparency has been anything but that. There has been no accounting for what the President and Secretary Clinton were doing during the Benghazi tragedy, yet we got all kind of detail about how closely the Administration monitored the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Department of State still needs to be investigated for putting their employees in such a dangerous environment. Funding was not the issue, because if the consulate was in danger, a simple evacuation would not have busted the budget. We need to be assured action has been taken to help prevent current and future diplomatic, CIA, and other American personnel, from being knowingly put in such dangerous situations. No, Benghazi was not just another incident to be listed and equated with American deaths overseas during the Obama, Bush, Clinton, or any other Administration. It stands out as a failure to act by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, and then a cover-up by a President running for re-election and a Secretary of State planning to be his successor four years later.
- Barbara Green, an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, was killed in a 2002 hand grenade attack on a church in the Pakistani capital. Four other people were killed in the attack, including Green’s daughter.
- USAID officer Laurence Foley was shot dead outside his home in Amman, Jordan, in 2002.
- Bureau of Diplomatic Security officer Edward Seitz was killed in a 2004 mortar attack on a U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport.
- Jim Mollen, the U.S. Embassy’s consultant to Iraq’s education ministry, was shot dead while driving in Baghdad in 2004.
- David Foy, facilities maintenance officer at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi was targeted and killed in a 2006 suicide bomb attack in his car near the consulate in Pakistan’s biggest city. His driver was also killed.
- USAID official John Granville was shot dead in his car while returning from a New Year’s Eve party at the British Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, in 2008.”
Rolf Yungclas is a recently retired newspaper editor from southwest Kansas who has been speaking out on the issues of the day in newspapers and online for over 15 years