Or did she?  From CNN:

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday tried to douse a political firestorm around the deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, saying she is responsible for the security of American diplomatic outposts.”

“I take responsibility” for the protection of U.S. diplomats, Clinton said during a visit to Peru. But she said an investigation now under way will ultimately determine what happened in the attack that left four Americans dead.”

This is refreshing to see some accountability from Team Obama but this doesn’t mean they are off the hook for telling the American people who is responsible for the lying they did weeks after the murders when they kept repeating the meme that these murders sprung from a protest (that never happened) over a movie (that nobody has ever seen).

We must always be skeptical when a Leftist steps forward to show accountability because there is almost always an ulterior motive and we need to explore that.

It could be that Hillary Clinton is demonstrating the characteristic of great leaders who take responsibility in times of disasters that are obviously caused by poor leadership.  Generals bear the responsibility of the dead soldiers they sent into a battle that was poorly planned.  CEO’s accept responsibility of disasters that happen due to safety violations that were overlooked by management.  Coaches accept responsibilities for their teams’ worst defeats due to his inability to prepare the team for the game.

It’s not that the leader was directly responsible for these disasters (generals don’t fire weapons, CEO’s don’t work on the assembly line and coaches don’t actually play in the games) but they man up and accept the responsibilities that come with leadership.  This is common knowledge for anyone who has ever led a team at work – The performance of the team is a direct result of the way you prepare your team and the culture you set that will guide them in their decision making.  If a leader doesn’t take safety or regulatory compliance serious then the team won’t either and disasters are almost certain to occur.

Obama made a comment earlier this year that would make us believe he also shares this characteristic of a leader:

“Well, here’s what I know, we were just talking about responsibility and as president of the United States, it’s pretty clear to me that I’m responsible for folks who are working in the federal government and you know, Harry Truman said the buck stops with you.”

So if Obama is “responsible for folks who are working in the federal government”, then he, not Hillary Clinton, is responsible for the murders of 4 US citizens in Benghazi.  I don’t know about you, but as a leader of an organization, if there was a disaster that happened on my watch I would be ashamed if someone who reported to me stepped up and accepted ultimate responsibility when I was silent for weeks.  Make no mistake about it; this is exactly what just happened when Hillary Clinton accepted responsibility for the disaster in Benghazi.

So why did Hillary Clinton do this?  Was she told to take one for the team?  They certainly needed someone to throw under the bus since the Vice President said during the VP debate that Obama didn’t know anything about the need for increased security.  From the CNN piece:

“The Obama administration has been heavily criticized after Vice President Joe Biden said during last week’s vice presidential debate that the White House did not know of requests to enhance security at Benghazi, contradicting testimony by State Department employees that requests had been made and rejected. After the debate, the White House said the vice president did not know of the requests because they were handled, as is the practice, by the State Department.”

“Clinton said President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.”

Maybe that is the reason but I think Clinton is too savvy to be forced into the role of scapegoat and I think she had another reason to accept blame.  I think Clinton was privy to Team Obama internal polling that showed how bad Obama’s passing-the-buck tactic was working with the American people and she saw an opening to get a head start on the 2016 presidential race.  She will come out of this crisis as the only person who acted like a leader and she knows Obama will lose big in November and this is her chance to start building the foundations for a 2016 run.

No matter the reasons for Hillary stepping forward and taking bullets for this debacle, the big loser in this is Obama.  Oh, and there is a foreign policy debate on Tuesday.  Popcorn!