The Libyan consulate attack

Clinton mea culpa over Libya deaths

US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton has taken responsibility for what happened in last month's attack on a US diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the American ambassador.

The Age,

17 October, 2012

Mrs Clinton said in an interview with CNN that President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden were not involved in diplomatic security decisions and should not be blamed for the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

''I take responsibility . . . I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,'' Mrs Clinton said on CNN's OutFront program.

The Libya attack has emerged as an issue in the US presidential race, with Republican nominee Mitt Romney and fellow Republicans saying the Obama administration failed to secure the facility before the attack and painted a false picture of it afterwards.

Three Republican senators on the Armed Services Committee called Mrs Clinton's acceptance of responsibility a ''laudable gesture'' while criticising the White House for not doing the same.

''The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief,'' senators John McCain, of Arizona, Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire, said. ''The buck stops there.''

In her CNN interview, Mrs Clinton also tried to deflect criticism that administration officials had stuck with a mistaken depiction of the attack as a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islamic video that was hijacked by extremists.

In the wake of such an incident, there is always ''confusion'' and the information has since changed, she told CNN.

She said her goal was to ensure that such attacks did not happen again. ''We can't not engage,'' she said. ''We cannot retreat.''