Hillary Clinton takes responsibility for Benghazi attack

Possibly in an attempt to draw political fire away from President Obama on the eve of the next presidential debate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed responsibility for the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya that left several consulate staff, including the US ambassador, dead. “I take responsibility,” Secretary Clinton stated, “I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.” The attack has been a major issue on the presidential campaign trail. In both the first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate, the Obama administration was accused of denying the embassy’s direct request for increased security. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan claimed Vice President Joe Biden’s statement that neither he nor President Obama knew about the request for more security personnel at the consulate “directly contradicts the testimony, the sworn testimony of State Department officials.” Secretary Clinton however backed up the Vice President by stating “The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals.” Republicans have responded by asserting the President should have known, regardless of whether or not he did in this instance. “If the president was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team, whose responsibility it is to keep the president informed,” Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said in a joint statement. On the flip side, Democrats have accused the Romney campaign of politicizing a national tragedy by discussing the attack in a policy speech shortly after they occured. The father of Ambassador Chris Stevens, the late US ambassador to Libya, has said, with regard to his son’s killing, that it would be “abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue.”