Nation & World A8
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THE DAILY HERALD
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WWW.HERALDNET.COM
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FRIDAY, 10.23.2015
Benghazi marathon Democrats say the probe has cost taxpayers more than $4.5 million and lasted longer than the Watergate investigation.
President vetoes defense bill CAROLYN KASTER / ASSOCIATED PRESS
House Benghazi Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., left, and the committee’s ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., have a heated discussion on the dais Thursday as Clinton testified before the committee.
EVAN VUCCI / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton settles into her seat at the hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
For Clinton, the political theater of the hearing offered both opportunity and potential pitfalls. It gave her a high-profile platform to show her self-control and command of foreign policy. But it also left her vulnerable to claims that she helped politicize the Benghazi tragedy. In one tense moment, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio accused her of deliberately misleading the public by linking the Benghazi violence at first to an Internet video insulting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Clinton, stone-faced for much of the hearing, smiled in bemusement as Jordan cut her off from answering. Offered the chance to comment, she said “some” people had wanted to use the video to justify the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, and that she rejected that justification. The argument went to the origins of the Benghazi saga and how Obama and top aides represented the attack in the final weeks of his re-election campaign. And it reflected the raw emotion the deadly violence still provokes, something Clinton will face over the course of her White House bid even if the Republican-led investigation loses steam.
“There were probably a number of different motivations” for the attack, Clinton said, recalling a time before a clear picture had emerged. Speaking to Jordan, she said: “I’m sorry that it doesn’t fit your narrative. I can only tell you what the facts were.” As the hearing neared its conclusion, Republican questions became increasingly aggressive. Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama, however, drew laughter from Clinton by asking if she was alone “the whole night” of the attacks after returning home. Challenged that she didn’t care enough about the victims, Clinton choked up while recounting a conversation with a wounded Benghazi guard. “Please do everything you can so that I can go back in the field,” Clinton said he asked her. “I told him I would. He was determined to go back, to protect our diplomats, to protect you when you travel,” she said, directing the last part to lawmakers. Clinton made no gaffes. And she never raised her voice in the manner she did at a Senate hearing on Benghazi in January 2013. Then, she shouted: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” Republicans campaigned off that oft-repeated sound bite, and
she was careful to avoid leaving a similarly indelible image Thursday. Gowdy said important questions remain unanswered: Why was the U.S. in Libya, why were security requests denied, why couldn’t the military respond quickly on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 and why did the administration change explanations of the attacks in the weeks afterward? Clinton focused on the bigger picture, starting with a plea for the U.S. to maintain a global leadership role despite threats to its diplomats. She said perfect security can never be achieved, drawing on attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military installations overseas during both Democratic and Republican administrations. “In Beirut we lost far more Americans, not once but twice within a year,” she said of the 1983 attacks in Lebanon that killed more than 250 Americans and dozens of others while Ronald Reagan was president. “People rose above politics. A Democratic Congress worked with a Republican administration to say, ‘What do we need to learn?’ ” At times, Clinton’s effort to restrain herself from a fight was apparent, but she gradually joined the fray. She nodded when Democrats fought as her proxies, such as when Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland described the probe as a partisan campaign replete with implausible conspiracy theories. The Republican criticism has included contentions by some lawmakers that Clinton personally denied security requests and ordered the U.S. military to “stand down” during the attacks. None of these were substantiated in the independent Accountability Review Board investigation ordered by Clinton after the attacks or seven subsequent congressional investigations. Thursday’s hearing yielded no such evidence, either.
American dies in raid to free Iraqis Associated Press IRBIL, Iraq — Acting on word of an “imminent mass execution” by Islamic State militants, dozens of U.S. special operations troops and Iraqi forces raided a northern Iraqi compound Thursday, freeing approximately 70 Iraqi prisoners in an operation that saw the first American killed in combat in the country since the U.S. campaign against ISIS began in 2014, officials said. The raiders killed and captured a number of militants and recovered what the Pentagon called a trove of valuable intelligence about the terrorist organization. The U.S. service member who died was not identified pending notification of relatives. Officials said this was the first American combat death in Iraq since the U.S. began its counter-ISIS military
Paul Ryan to seek House Speaker job WASHINGTON — Rep. Paul Ryan declared his candidacy for speaker of the U.S. House on Thursday, pledging in a letter to GOP colleagues, “We have an opportunity to turn the page. ... Instead of rising to the occasion, Washington is falling short — including the House of Representatives. We are not solving the country’s problems; we are only adding to them,” he said. It is time, he said, “to start with a clean slate, and to rebuild what has been lost.” Ryan will face elections next week in a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday and then on the House floor Thursday.
Associated Press WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton strove to close the book on the worst episode of her tenure as secretary of state Thursday, battling Republican questions in a marathon hearing that grew contentious but revealed little new about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. She firmly defended her record while seeking to avoid any mishap that might damage her presidential campaign. Pressed about events before and after the deaths of four Americans, Clinton had confrontational exchanges with several GOP lawmakers but also fielded supportive queries from Democrats. In the end, there were relatively few questions for the Democratic presidential front-runner about the specific events of Sept. 11, 2012, which Clinton said she continues to lose sleep over. The hearing ended at 9 p.m., some 11 hours after it began, with some of the fiercest arguments of the day as Clinton and the House Benghazi Committee’s Republican chairman fought over the private email account she maintained as President Barack Obama’s chief diplomat. “I came here because I said I would,” an exhausted Clinton told Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, her chief interrogator. “I tried to answer your questions. I cannot do any more than that.” Gowdy declared after the end of the session: “We keep going on.” He portrayed the investigation as a nonpartisan, fact-finding exercise although fellow Republicans recently described it as designed to hurt Clinton’s presidential bid. Democrats have pointed out that the probe has now cost U.S. taxpayers more than $4.5 million and, after 17 months, lasted longer than the 1970s Watergate investigation. When Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said the hearing wasn’t a prosecution, Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, bluntly disagreed. He told Clinton: “The purpose of this committee is to prosecute you.” The appearance came at a moment of political strength for Clinton. A day earlier, Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not compete with her in the presidential race. She also is riding the momentum of a solid debate performance last week.
ACROSS THE U.S.
campaign in August 2014. Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the target of the raid was a prison near the town of Hawija and that the raid was undertaken at the request of the Kurdish Regional Government, the semi-autonomous body that governs the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. He said U.S. special operations forces supported what he called an Iraqi peshmerga rescue operation. The peshmerga are the Kurdish region’s organized militia. The U.S. has worked closely with them in training and advising roles, but this was the first known instance of U.S. ground forces operating alongside Iraqi forces in combat since launching Operation Inherent Resolve last year. “This operation was deliberately planned and launched after receiving information that the hostages faced imminent
mass execution,” Cook said, adding later that it appeared the hostages faced death “perhaps within hours” and that freed hostages told authorities some had been killed at the prison recently, prior to the rescue. Cook said Defense Secretary Ash Carter approved the U.S. participation in the mission. Cook called it “consistent with our counter-(ISIS) effort to train, advise and assist Iraqi forces.” U.S. combat troops have rarely, if ever, participated directly in combat against ISIS fighters on the ground since the U.S. mission began in 2014. The U.S. has mostly limited its role to training and advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces, airdropping humanitarian relief supplies and providing daily airstrikes in ISIS-held areas of Iraq and Syria. Cook said it was a “unique”
circumstance for the American military in Iraq, although he would not say that it was the only time U.S. forces have engaged in a form of ground combat in Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. He said it was in keeping with the parameters of the U.S. military’s role in Iraq. “They are allowed to defend themselves, and also defend partner forces, and to protect against the loss of innocent life,” Cook said. “And that’s what played out in this particular operation.” The circumstances in which the U.S. military member was killed were unclear, but one U.S. official said the American had been shot in a firefight at the scene. Cook said the service member was wounded during the mission and died after receiving medical care. Cook said four peshmerga soldiers were wounded.
President Barack Obama vetoed a $612 billion defense policy bill Thursday in a rebuke to congressional Republicans, and insisted they send him a better version that doesn’t tie his hands on some of his top priorities. In an Oval Office ceremony, Obama praised the bill for ensuring the military stays funded and making improvements on retirement and cybersecurity. Yet he pointedly accused Republicans of resorting to “gimmicks” and prohibiting other changes needed to address modern security threats. Republicans vowed to muster the votes to override him.
Carson leads Trump in Iowa Ben Carson has surged into the lead among Iowa Republicans, a new Quinnipiac University poll said Thursday. Carson bumped national front-runner Donald Trump, who had led in Iowa polls last month. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with strong appeal to the state’s conservative evangelical voters, had 28 percent, while the real estate mogul had 20 percent. Iowa holds the nation’s first presidential caucus Feb. 1. “It’s Ben Carson’s turn in the spotlight,” a poll director said. Eighty-four percent of Republicans said Carson shared their values while nine of 10 said he was honest and trustworthy.
Clinton tops Sanders in poll With Vice President Joe Biden out of the presidential race, the nation’s first nominating contest between frontrunner Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders is gaining steam, according to a new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll. Clinton leads the field with 48 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers when Biden’s supporters are reallocated to their second-choice candidates; Sanders is in second place at 41 percent. Clinton led Sanders by a similar margin of 43 percent to 35 percent in the Iowa Poll conducted in August.
Florida: Pluto spacecraft The spacecraft that gave us the first close-up views of Pluto now has a much smaller object in its sights. NASA’s New Horizons fired its thrusters Thursday, putting it on track to fly past a recently found, less than 30-mile-wide object out on the solar system frontier. The close encounter with what’s known as 2014 MU69 would occur in 2019. It orbits nearly 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. Launched in 2006, New Horizons became Pluto’s first visitor from planet Earth in July.
N. Jersey: Fake casino chips A poker player is going to prison for bringing millions of dollars in counterfeit chips to a tournament and then breaking the plumbing when he flushed them down a toilet to hide the evidence. A judge Thursday sentenced Christian Lusardi to five years in prison. Lusardi also must pay $463,540 to the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa for the revenue it lost when it canceled a 2014 tournament in Atlantic City and $9,455 to Harrah’s Casino Hotel for damaging its plumbing. Lusardi, 43, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to trademark counterfeiting and criminal mischief.
AROUND THE WORLD Britain: Harry to visit U.S. Prince Harry will join first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden in Virginia next week to promote the Invictus Games. Harry spearheaded the games, an international sporting competition for injured armed service personnel. The first games were held in London in September, and the event in Orlando, Florida, is planned for May 2016. The prince’s visit Wednesday aims to highlight the mental health and wellbeing of service personnel. From Herald news services