Benghazi hearing: You can’t handle the truth

The congressional hearing on the Benghazi attack which was live on CNN yesterday beat all TV programme's hands down. It was gripping, riveting and full of court room drama, except that it was no court and the defendant was none other than former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. I could draw parallel to the movie few good men (1992) in which Tom Kaffee (Tom Cruise as the prosecutor) grills army Col.Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) in trying to solicit the confession from him about the code red command issued by him.

In a similar fashion the Congressmen on the panel, many of whom were prosecutors, rattled a wave of attacks that came one after another directed at Clinton. Using slide shows, video clips, various committee reports they tried to pin her down on following

• That she deliberately ignored warnings and feedback on the Benghazi attack that led to the killing of its ambassador
• There was something more to her personal relationship and equations with the slain ambassador
• That she deliberately misled the American public with false statement that it was provoked by a social media video that led to a sudden uprising while admitting in private that it was a planned attack

Clinton on her part played the usual dodgy role deflecting pointed questions like a shrewd politician. She was no Col.Jessup who in a sudden burst of emotion looses cool and blurts out his admission to the crime. She looked composed (rather nonchalant and almost dismissive in the beginning) except for one instance where she choked up a wee bit. One thing the ex-secretary of state seemed to suggest (uncannily like Jessup in the movie) to the worked-up congressmen "You can’t handle the truth" (loved the way Jack Nicholson delivers this dialogue in the movie, with slow measurd tone laced with sneer and almost dismissive attitude)

The complexities of functioning of the various govt depts, constraints, decision making process, geo political turmoil’s and the impact it has on a super power machinery was at fore in what was one of the best live programs in a while.