Thursday, May 15, 2014

HRC And Boko Haram

State Department repeatedly rejected efforts to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. In recent weeks, the group has exploded onto the world stage by kidnapping more than 250 girls at a Nigerian boarding school.

And since it was HRC's State Dept that failed to get ahead of the curve it could drop several metric tonnes of chiz  on HRC...

It is so clearly and vividly a terrorist organization that it seems indefensible that the State Department would have refused to designate it as such. A thorough investigation of the decision process that protected Boko Haram from 2011 until late 2013 could be devastating.

It is a potentially devastating addition to a record as secretary of state that included a number of decisions favoring the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (after abandoning a longtime U.S. ally there), as well as appeasing a virulently anti-American regime in Iran -- moves that have not turned out so well, to say the least.
 
Now the Boko Haram decision raises a whole new set of questions.
 
How could the Clinton State Department reject naming Boko Haram as a terrorist group?
 
Who was involved in blocking Boko Haram's terrorist designation?
 
Are any of the so-called experts who were totally wrong still at the State Department?
 
Did Clinton have anything to do with refusing to designate Boko Haram?
 
If not, was she even aware of the controversy? Shouldn't she certainly have been aware, considering the number of federal agencies and members of Congress that were asking her to designate the organization?
 
These questions about Clinton's record are potentially even more serious than the questions about Benghazi. As Congressman Patrick Meehan, who chairs the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, told Rogin, by failing to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization in 2011, "We lost two years of increased scrutiny. The kind of support that is taking place now would have been in place two years ago."
 
In light of the recent events in Nigeria, former Secretary Clinton and other key State Department officials owe the American people some answers about their decisions.
 

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