Marco Rubio Calls for Sec. Clinton to Testify on Benghazi
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in an op-ed on Fox News’ website Wednesday, calls for outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify about security failures in Benghazi, Libya, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in both open and classified hearings.
A report on the terrorist attack that the Accountability Review Board released last week told Americans “much that we already knew,” Rubio wrote.
“The State Department’s naïve reliance on local militias of questionable capacity and uncertain loyalty was, in retrospect, a grave mistake,” he said.
Four officials resigned in the wake of the report, but Rubio said questions remain about how higher officials “could have been unaware about the security situation in Benghazi and not done more to protect U.S. personnel and facilities there.”
He called for the State Department to readjust embassy security in high-risk areas.
“We can no longer expect to rely primarily on host nations to protect American diplomats in all parts of the world,” Rubio wrote. “We must be clear-eyed, however, about the dangers our people face in these places and, as the Accountability Review Board notes, we must be able to protect our own people.”
Secretary Clinton claimed responsibility for the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and for that, Rubio said he takes her at her word.
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