During a campaign stop Tuesday afternoon, Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton responded to the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s official report to Congress, saying, “it’s time to move on.”
During the stop in Denver, she said:
I have said from the very beginning nothing is more important than the security of our diplomats and our development officials who go into dangerous places around the world pursuing American values, interests and our security. And I said this when I testified for 11 hours that no one has thought more about or lost more sleep over the lives that we lost, the four Americans, which was devastating. And we owe to those brave Americans that we make sure we learn the right lessons from this tragedy.
That’s why I immediately put together an independent committee to go everywhere, look everywhere, come up with what recommendations would help us prevent such tragedies in the future, and that of course should be the goal. I understand that after two years and more than $7 million spent by the Benghazi Committee out of taxpayer funds, it had to today report it had found nothing—nothing—to contradict the conclusions of the Independent Accountability Board or the conclusions of the prior multiple earlier investigations carried out on a bipartisan basis in the Congress.
So while this unfortunately took on a partisan tinge, I want us to stay focused on what I’ve always wanted us to stay focused on and that is the important work of diplomacy and development. That principle is especially true in dangerous places.
We cannot withdraw or retreat from the world. America needs a presence for a lot of reasons. And the best way to honor the commitment and sacrifice of those we lost is to redouble our efforts to provide the resources and support that our diplomats and our development experts deserve.
So I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report but I think it is pretty clear it is time to move on.
