Spotlight: Committee Republicans slash Hillary Clinton's Libya policy, Benghazi record

Hillary Clinton on Thursday faced a marathon grilling from Congressional Republicans about her role in the botched U.S. Libya policy and her initial account of what caused the 2012 Benghazi attack in the first face-off since Clinton announced her White House bid earlier this year.

"Retreat from the world is not an option," said Clinton in her opening statement here at a hearing on the attack, stressing that the incident that claimed four American lives, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, should not discourage U.S. global actions.

However, just moments after her remarks, Clinton was criticized by Republican lawmaker Peter Roskam from the 12-member House Select Committee on Benghazi for her strong advocacy for U.S. military involvement in Libya despite equally strong opposition within the Obama administration.

Calling Clinton the "chief architect" of U.S. Libya policy, Roskam said Clinton insisted on the U.S. involvement in Libya despite grim warning and opposition from senior U.S. diplomats.

"(Stephen Mull, then executive secretary of the State Department) said this, 'In the case of our diplomatic history, when we've provided material or tactical military support to people seeking to drive their leaders from power, no matter how just their cause, it's tended to produce net negatives for our interests over the long term in those countries,'" quoted Roskam.

"They (U.S. senior diplomats) were pushing back, but you overcame those objections," said Roskam, adding that Vice President Joe Biden, then Defense chief Robert Gates as well as the National Security Council also opposed military actions in Libya.

"But you persuaded President Obama to intervene militarily," he said.

In her own defense, Clinton said U.S. allies in Europe "asked for the United States to help," and the decision for the U.S. involvement came after "enormous amount" of consideration and was made by U.S. President Barack Obama.

Republicans' slash over Clinton's role in the coalition bombing campaign in 2011 that toppled Muammar el-Qaddafi came as no surprise since the GOP had for long been blasting the White House for turning Libya into a lawless country after military actions.

Earlier this month, Pete Hoekstra, former chief of the House intelligence committee, argued in a newly published book that Obama and Clinton wrongly ousted Qaddafi by military means and then allowed the country to turn into a training ground for terrorists.

"The tragedy of misbegotten American policy in Libya continues to unfold, and only the most deluded optimists believe that there will not be more bad news to come," wrote Hoekstra.

During Thursday's hearing, the notion that the 2012 Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack was raised by Republican Representative Jim Jordan, who accused Clinton of deliberately linking the attack to local protests against an inflammatory anti-Islam video to avoid damage to Obama's re-election effort.

On the night of the attack, then U.S. Secretary of State Clinton released a statement which read that "Some have sought to justify the vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet."

However, one hour after her public statement, Clinton told her family that "Two officers were killed today in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda-like group," Jordan said, citing Clinton's exchange of emails with her family.

Also citing two other newly released communications with Libyan president and Egyptian prime minister within 24 hours after the attack, Jordan revealed that Clinton was fully aware that "the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It's a planned attack, not a protest."

However, five days after the attack, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told five Sunday TV talk shows that the attack "began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to" protests in Cairo, Egypt, sparked by "this hateful video."

"You can live with a protest about a video. That won't hurt you. But a terrorist attack will. So you can't be square with the American people," said Jordan. "You did it because Libya was supposed to be ... this great success story for the Obama White House and the Clinton State Department."

In the face of pressing from Jordan, Clinton said the "insinuations" did "a great disservice to the people at the State Department."

"There was a lot of conflicting information that we were trying to make sense of," argued Clinton. "The situation was very fluid. It was fast-moving. There was also a claim of responsibility by (al-Qaeda-affiliated) Ansar al-Sharia. And when I talked to the Egyptian prime minister, I said that this was a claim of responsibility by Ansar al-Sharia."

The revelation of seemingly contradictory accounts of the cause of the Benghazi attack could further hurt Clinton's trustworthiness and favorability among voters, as the Democratic presidential front-runner continued to be dogged by controversies around her private setup of a email system during her stint in the State Department.

According to a CNN/ORC poll released earlier this month, 50 percent of Americans nationwide hold unfavorable opinions of Clinton, compared with 33 percent shortly after her idiosyncrasy of overguarding her emails was exposed in March. Endit