John Bolton: Hillary 'unfit to command'

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton told CPAC that Hillary Clinton was "unfit" to be president, arguing her foreign policy record is indistinguishable from the Obama administration's record of foreign-policy failures.

"Remember Benghazi? Hillary stuck with the story that the attack was over an Internet video when she had contrary evidence even as the attack was going on," Bolton said.

"She left her desk at the State Department to go home while the attack at Benghazi was still going on and Americans at U.S. embassies in North Africa and all across the Middle East were at risk," he said.

"No boss I ever worked for at the State Department would have left their desk while Americans were in danger," said Bolton. "Every boss I had at the State Department would have been at their State Department desk and on the phone every 15 minutes."

Bolton summed up his view of Clinton's handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans were killed.

"Our people at Benghazi were left to die in a terrorist attack," he said.

"How did we evacuate our people from Libya? By the United States Navy? No, we had to rent a Greek ferry boat to come to Tripoli to get our people out, and even after that lesson, Hillary Clinton failed to take adequate steps to protect embassy personnel in the region from what happened at Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012."

Bolton said Benghazi must never be forgotten.

"Terrorists around the world have learned from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that you can kill an American ambassador and do it with impunity," he said. "That’s Hillary Clinton’s lesson."

Bolton charged that Clinton left Americans to die at Benghazi without taking any steps to find out what military means might have been available to save them.

He then turned to the U.S. relationship with Israel and the controversy surrounding the invitation by House Speaker John Boehner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to a joint session of Congress while Obama has chosen not to meet with him.

"Barack Obama has had the worst relationship with Israel of any American president since the state of Israel was created in 1948," Bolton said. "I congratulate Speaker Boehner for inviting this ally to speak to a joint session of Congress. Obama's reaction is reprehensible, and if Hillary Clinton is ever to show any daylight between her foreign policy and Barack Obama's, she should welcome Netanyahu here and offer to work with him."

Bolton recalled that he said in 2008, when Obama ran for president for the first time, that Obama was not qualified to be president on matters of national security.

He still believes Obama is unqualified, "and we have two more years to go."

"This is why foreign policy must be at the center of the 2016 presidential campaign, and I intend to play a role in that discussion," he said.

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Bolton expanded on his assertion that Clinton's foreign policy record makes her unfit to be president.

He noted that Clinton, as secretary of state, supported Obama's decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011, calling it "the single most significant decision to explain the chaos in the Middle East, the rise of ISIS, and the creation of a new state out of what used to be Syria and Iraq."

He also held Clinton responsible for what he characterized as "the consistent mishandling of the Arab Spring, refusing to recognize it was not a new flower of democracy, but the onset of a new wave of international terror, the fruit of which we are now seeing."

He blamed Clinton for failing to see that "ISIS would rise not only in Iraq and Syria, but also in Libya where Isis has just beheaded 21 Coptic Christians."

"It is now depressingly clear that Hillary Clinton is likely to be the Democratic Party's candidate for president in 2016," Bolton concluded. "I feel I have a civic obligation to escort Hillary and Bill Clinton to the exit door of American politics."

Check out WND's extensive coverage of the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference:

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