Hillary and Libya: Update

That's "Aidez-moi!" on his fingers. Image via Freaking News.

The extremely remarkable news coming out of France this week about ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, under arrest in a grotesque illegal campaign financing case, sheds unexpected light on a question we were working on two years ago, as the presidential campaign and the calumny campaign against Hillary Clinton were intensifying, and one of the angles of the latter was the portrayal of Clinton as a bloodthirsty warmonger against peace-loving Donald J. Trump, as in this example featuring a strange pro-Trump alliance among Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, Green candidate Jill Stein, The New York Times, and young Conor:

Comeback of stupid shit?

Roman temple tombs at Ghirza, Libya. Photo by Esther Kofod.

So, SuperTuesday, huh. Everybody from Corey Robin to Ross Douthat is out with a venture into some of that contrarian horserace panditry as if that's something cool, or adult (gee, Dad, I sure wish I could be like Mark Halperin when I grow up!), the professor working out Bernie's demographic path to unexpected victory (he got 41% of the non-white Democratic vote in Massachusetts!) while the Monsignor games out the chances of a contested convention (credit where credit is due, he uses the correct expression instead of the idiotic "brokered convention", and while his scenario is equally idiotic, or worse, this is a year where that is no bar to becoming reality).

Imma say Hillary over the Donald in November with a record low turnout, and the usual awful performances by the Democratic senatorial and congressional committees leaving Congress more or less as it is. No I'm not. I will leave that to others.

I am feeling kind of distressed, amid the SuperTuesday celebrations and laments, by something else that happened virtually in the middle of it, the huge report by Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the Times that came out Sunday and Monday on the US role in Libyan military operations of 2011-12 and the part played by Secretary of State Clinton; not so much in the intervention itself as in her apparent failure to learn anything from it:

Sixteen scandals

Do not talk to this man unless a State Department lawyer is present. Jason Chaffetz, AP photo.

Thanks to Peggy Noonan, with her expert knowledge of how things work in a conspiratorial White House, I am starting at last to get a fix on what might have happened during the Benghazi incident in the alternate universe where Republicans are right about things.

I

President's private office, White House, 11 September 2012, 4:00 PM.

HENCHMAN: Mr. President? Bad news from Libya, I'm afraid.

OBAMA: Curses! Ex Africa semper aliquid novi! What is it this time?