In 1998, terrorists attacked two US embassies. No one blamed the secretary of state.

Jennifer Williams · Friday, July 22, 2016, 9:15 am

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

Radical Islamic terrorists attack a US embassy in a known terrorist hotspot, killing several Americans. Military reinforcements in the immediate aftermath of the attack are slow to arrive on the scene.

A subsequent inquiry finds that security at the embassy before the attack was woefully inadequate, and that repeated requests from top embassy personnel for more resources and better security went unheeded by the State Department leadership in Washington. The seriousness of the terrorist threat was also downplayed in Washington, despite repeated warnings from intelligence officials and Embassy staff that the risk was real.

Benghazi, right?

Wrong. That’s a description of one of the two bombings of US embassies in East Africa that occurred in 1998, which together killed over 220 people, including 12 Americans, and injured over 4,000 others.

The reason you probably haven’t heard of those attacks, or at least don’t remember them very well, is that they didn’t erupt into a massive political scandal like the 2012 terrorist attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi has. There was no harrowing action movie made about them.

And despite the loss of American lives and the findings afterward about the State Department’s many failures, the 1998 East Africa bombings did not lead to vicious accusations that Madeleine Albright, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks, left Americans to die and thus should be thrown in prison. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has faced all that and more over her handling of Benghazi.

That’s because, unlike Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright was not running for president in one of the most toxic eras of partisan politics this country has ever seen.

Read more
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/22/12241894/benghazi-hillary-clinton-1998-east-africa-embassy-bombings