Jeb explains: his brother is not responsible for 9/11 -- but Hillary is responsible for Benghazi

That is exactly the question that Jake Tapper confronted Jeb Bush with Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."  Jeb tried to extricate himself from the contradiction, but he wasn't convincing.

Jeb has been saying it over and over . . . and he should never have brought it up in that second debate.   He, rather stupidly, thought he had scored a coup when he triumphantly countered a taunt from Donald Trump by saying: "There's one thing I know for sure about my brother:   he kept us safe."

The backlash, and it hasn't stopped since, is:  'Yes, but 9/11 happened on your brother's watch.'  To which Jeb lamely responds that "it's what you do after an attack that matters and shows leadership. . . .  He united the country and kept us safe after 9/11."

Jake Tapper took the ball and scored:  "How do you respond to critics who ask:  If your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all [for 9/11] . . .   How do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?"

Here Jeb got a little convoluted, talking about the question of security and whether the State Department responded to warnings of possible terrorist action and that the State Department had a duty to ensure proper security at its consulates, including Benghazi.

Careful, Jeb.  Because that begs bringing up these established facts:

(1)  President Bush's national security briefing on August 6, 2001 warned that Bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S.;  and Condi Rice had been told by departing Clinton officials that bin Laden and al Qaeda were the primary terrorist sources of worry.  There is no evidence that they took it seriously.  In fact, Bush's Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the NSA's counterterrorism expert [before 9/11] that he didn't understand why there was so much focus on bin Laden since "Iraqi terrorism" posed just as much of a threat.

(2) As to beefing up security at Benghazi, it was Congress, not the State Department, that slashed spending on diplomatic security for U.S. embassies.  In addition, there have already been seven official investigations of what happened in Benghazi, and none has found any evidence to blame the State Department or Hillary Clinton.   And it's clear that #8, the current Select Committee, is designed to try to hurt her politically.

As Peter Beinart wrote in The Atlantic, "There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did [George] Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t.  It's not even close."   There is no evidence of heightened security or surveillance -- or any increased focus on bin Laden.   They were too intent on finding (or fixing) reason to invade Iraq and get rid of Saddaam.


Jeb -- what you thought was an ace up your sleeve has backfired;   your attempts to fix it have just made it all look worse.   There is plenty to throw back at you about your brother and keeping the country safe (what about all our military people who died needlessly in the Dubya-Cheney war in Iraq?    That cat is long gone out of the bag -- and Donald Trump isn't going to let you forget it, not that he knows your vulnerability on the subject.    Nor will the real journalists.    

Ralph