The National Journal has hit the salient points in its 9 Things You Want to Know About Hillary Clinton's Testimony--and 1 You Need to Know: The scuffles, the praise, the questions about Benghazi--it all came out Wednesday morning and so did an ominous warning about al-Qaida.
8) Chris Stevens wanted to be there. In his opening statement, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the acting chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Ambassador Stevens wanted the special mission to be in Benghazi because it was the cradle of the Libyan revolution and essential for U.S. diplomacy.But here is what you really need to know:10) Clinton painted a very worrisome picture of the terrorist situation in Africa. Discussing the Islamist rebels in Mali, she sounded an alarm. Just because al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has never attacked the United States doesn't mean there's no threat developing in the Sahara desert, she maintained ominously: "Before 2001, we hadn't been attacked before the war of 1812 and Pearl Harbor," she said.She noted that while what she called “core al-Qaida” in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been significantly degraded, “affiliates and wannabes” were very much alive in Africa and they have plans to target Western interests, as they did in Algeria this month, and to overthrow governments in the region—even Islamist governments established since the Arab Spring.While Clinton offered examples where the U.S. has been able to turn around a deteriorating security situation—most notably Somalia, where we recently restored diplomatic relations, and Colombia, where the narco terror wars are more muted—none of it was terribly reassuring. In Somalia, she noted that we’d played a vital role. “We trained the Djiboutis, we trained the Burundis,” she said of the regional forces that helped restore some semblance of stability to Somalia. But Clinton noted that several months after the attacks on Benghazi, a "Pandora’s Box" of weapons had been opened up in the region.