A Democratic senator on Thursday introduced a new bill to boost security at U.S. embassies in the aftermath of an attack on a diplomatic outpost in Libya last year.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a role he inherited as the “scandal” over the Obama administration’s response to the attack in Benghazi, Libya was reaching one of its many peaks in January. Today on the Senate floor, Menendez castigated his colleagues who believed that the Senate had not done enough to investigate Benghazi, reminding them that there have been 11 hearings in Congress on the matter since September. “We have fully vetted this issue,” Menendez said.

The focus “should not be to score political points at the expense of the families of the four victims,” he went on to say. “It should be on doing all we can to protect our personnel serving overseas and provide the necessary oversight and legislative authority to carry out the administrative review board’s recommendations.” With that in mind, Menendez introduced the Embassy Security and Personnel Protection Act of 2013, a bill he hoped would be “able to count on the support of all of our colleagues to enact this crucial, time-sensitive legislation without delay, without obstruction, without political grandstanding.”

The bill would provide further funding to the Capital Security Cost-Sharing Program, first instituted in 1998 to boost security to “high-risk, high-threat” diplomatic posts and has since been chronically underfunded. Under the new legislation, the program would be able to build far more than the two to three facilities a year for the two dozen posts that fall into the high-risk, high-threat category. It would also provide funding for implementing a shift in the mission of Marine Corps security guards posted at U.S. embassies to protect staffers as well as classified assets. The bill would also require the State Department to provide verification to Congress of it fully putting into place its Accountability Review Board (ARB) on Benghazi’s recommendations for improvement.

Diplomatic security has been given a short-shrift in the aftermath of Benghazi. During her appearance before the Senate in January, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to persuade Congress to shift $1.3 billion in funding bookmarked for warfighting in Iraq towards providing for greater diplomatic security. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) shepherded legislation through the Senate fulfilling Clinton’s request, but the bill died in the House. Since then, most of the conversation surrounding Benghazi has focused almost exclusively on the Obama administration’ss supposed cover-up, no matter how many documents are released debunking the claim.
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Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Republican who was appointed to the position by George W. Bush, told CBS News on Saturday that he would have handled the situation in Benghazi the same way that the Obama administration did last September.

During an interview that aired on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Gates defended the administration’s reaction to the attacks in Libya and dismissed many of the criticisms leveled by his fellow Republicans as “cartoonish”:

“Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were,” said Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William and Mary.

“We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible.” he explained.

Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to “scare them with the noise or something,” Gates said, ignored the “number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi’s arsenals.”
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Another suggestion posed by some critics of the administration, to, as Gates said, “send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous.”

“It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he said. “The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way, and there just wasn’t time to do that.”

Gates also defended former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has increasingly become the subject of Republican criticism. Gates responded with a simple and emphatic “no” when asked if he believed Clinton could possibly be involved in any sort of a cover up, as some Republicans have baselessly suggested.

Republicans have refused to put their Benghazi obsession to rest, focusing on discrepancies between talking points and agency infighting rather than addressing ways to prevent future attacks and finding out who was responsible for the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other colleagues. Critics have accused Republicans of turning their Benghazi hearing into a political circus, trying to hang the attack on Hillary Clinton to hurt her chances of a possible run for the White House in 2016.

Republicans are touting today’s House Oversight Committee hearing as a potential final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s continuing cover-up of what really happened the night a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya was attacked last September. In truth, the event is sure to be a rehash of previously debunked finger-pointing and yet another round of political posturing surrounding the tragic death of four Americans.

The GOP’s star witness at today’s hearings is the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, Gregory Hicks, who the right-wing has labeled the main Benghazi “whistle-blower.” Hicks is expected to give testimony before the panel detailing what he believes could have done above and beyond the efforts the administration expended the night of the attack, actions he claims could have saved lives:

“If we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” Hicks told House Republican investigators.

Hicks is also expected to explain to the panel that a team of special operations forces was told not to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi prior to the second wave of the attack. According to an excerpt of Hicks’ testimony “[Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

Republicans are latching onto Hicks’ testimony about the lack of military response during the attack as evidence of the administration’s negligence in protecting diplomats overseas and a resulting cover-up to avoid scrutiny. “We were certainly misled at every step of the way,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), one of the loudest voices on Benghazi, said on Monday to a surprisingly skeptical panel on Fox News.

The military has repeatedly said, however, that there were simply no air assets close enough to Benghazi that would have arrived in time to make a difference. Hicks himself admitted during his pre-hearing testimony that the nearest fighter jets were at Aviano Air Base in southern Italy, hours away from Libya with no tanker assets available for refueling purposes.

And while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during the Senate’s last hearing on the military’s response to Benghazi scolded the Pentagon for not having assets available at the Souda Bay naval base in Crete, Greece, the fact remains that even the hour and a half from the island to Benghazi would have been too late to save Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens and communications specialist Sean Smith. Both died during the first wave of the attack, less than an hour after the Pentagon was first notified.

Likewise, despite what Fox News reports have said, U.S. forces based in Europe as part of U.S. Africa Command would not have arrived until after the second wave of attacks, which took place at the CIA annex in Benghazi hours after the first, had finished.

“The United States military, as I’ve said, is not and frankly should not be a 911 service, arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,” then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services committee in February. That hasn’t stopped conservatives from railing against the lack of cavalry riding into Benghazi at the last minute, which in turn ignores the valiant efforts from the CIA’s response team that saved lives the night of the attack.
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The Senate this afternoon overwhelmingly voted in favor of approving John Kerry’s nomination to become Secretary of State, with only three Senators — Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Cornyn (R-TX), and James Inhofe (R-OK) — voting against their colleague. Earlier today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee moved forward Kerry to the full Senate unanimously, reflecting the relative ease that Kerry has had in ascending to Obama’s second term cabinet.

Kerry has spent the last twenty-eight years in the Senate representing Massachusetts, all of them serving on the Foreign Relations committee, the last four as Chairman. The closeness in foreign policy vision that he shares with the Obama administration made Kerry one of the most likely choices to take the reins of State for the next four years. The ties between the two during Kerry’s chairman ship was close enough that former Sen. Gary Hart once called Kerry effectively “the congressional secretary of state.”

Kerry is the first of the President’s nominees to be confirmed following his inaugural. Kerry and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been speaking “almost daily” to prepare him to move into the 7th floor office in Foggy Bottom. Secretary Clinton will be stepping down following her last day on the job, Friday, Feb. 1.

Starting then, Kerry will have a full diplomatic plate, including pending negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, managing a rising China, limiting fallout from the Arab Spring in the Middle East, and advancing international action on climate change. In meeting these challenges, Kerry will find himself working closely with his replacement as Chairman on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

Kerry’s pending resignation of his Senate seat will prompt a decision among the people of Massachusetts regarding his successor. Retired Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) has made no secret of his desire to be named as interim Senator by Gov. Deval Patrick (D). No matter who temporarily fills the seat, a special election will be held in June, following an April primary. Former Sen. Scott Brown is thought to be the most likely Republican candidate, while Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has received the support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and other key Massachusetts Democrats.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton forcefully pushed back against Republican theatrics during yesterday Capitol Hill hearings on the Benghazi attacks, compelling conservatives and right-wing media to — predictably — demonize her.

But one right-wing pundit saw it a bit differently. Fox News military analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret.) — who has certainly not been known for his affection for progressives and liberalism — praised Clinton’s performance. “I came away with deeper respect for Hillary Clinton’s bureaucratic lawyerly brilliance,” Peters said. “I mean she was just tough and good and the Republicans looked like weenies:”

PETERS: Hillary mops floor with congressmen and senators. She was as James Rosen pointed out, she was prepared. She had it down. She had answers — anticipatory answers ready.

And the congressmen and senators didn’t do their homework. They made speeches again as James Rosen pointed out. They — their questions were ill focused. They went down the red herring road with Susan Rice as you pointed out.

Watch the clip:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) issued a statement on Wednesday slamming House Republicans for removing an authorization for increasing embassy security funding from an emergency disaster relief bill.

Released on the same day as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony before Congress on the Benghazi attack, Leahy doesn’t hold back in his scorn for the House. “Since the Republican takeover of the House, House Republicans have proposed deep cuts for U.S. embassy operations and programs across the board, including for security,” Leahy said in his statement. “Now they have topped even that record of recklessness”:

“In preventing this transfer of unused funds appropriated earlier for Iraq – funds already appropriated and approved by Congress – [House Republicans] have hobbled the work that everyone agrees is needed to harden our embassy security efforts. [...] Many of our diplomats serve in dangerous places by necessity. We need to protect them as best we can, without turning our embassies into impenetrable fortresses that make it impossible for them to do their jobs.

“For Republicans to blame the Administration for failing to protect our diplomats, without acknowledging their own efforts to slash resources for embassy security, is pure, distilled hypocrisy.”

Secretary Clinton previously announced her intention to request the ability to transfer funds at the release of the Accountability Review Board’s findings in December. The Senate passed a bill approving $60 billion worth of funding to clean up from Superstorm Sandy in late December, to which Leahy attached an amendment authorizing the transfer from unused Iraq and Afghanistan funding to allow for increases in embassy security. Since then, the House has taken the lead in drafting the relief bills, each time leaving out Leahy’s provision.

Clinton repeated her call several times during her testimony before both houses of Congress on Wednesday, noting that the House had yet to act. House Republicans have still been reluctant to provide her request, despite continuing to attack the Obama administration’s commitment to security. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) this morning on CNN made clear that he believes that security failures in Benghazi were “not about the budget.” Likewise, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) — a lead provocateur on Benghazi — once proudly declared that he “absolutely” cut funding to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security.