Transcript of Hugh Hewitt's Interview of Rand Paul on the Benghazi Hearing

Just a little while after grilling Hillary Clinton on her lazy oversight of the situation in Libya, Rand Paul was on Hugh Hewitt's show.   It's really nice to see someone continuing to be out there defending our values and explaining our positions.  Mitt Romney never did it and neither Paul Ryan nor Marco Rubio, the supposed "stars" of the right, have been doing it.  Anyway, here are some excerpts, read the whole thing:

HH: I want to thank you at the beginning just for your straightforward statement regarding the culpability of Secretary Clinton for Benghazi and the acts. There's quite a lot of comment on this. How long ago had you reached that conclusion that she was indeed culpable?

RP: Well you know, when I first heard about it, everybody seemed to be so concerned about sort of the cover up of everybody talking about was this a movie, or was this regarding a movie. Well, that's important. To me, it always seemed to be more important why there wasn't adequate security there, why there weren't Marines there, why wasn't this embassy protected like the embassy in Iraq. They just emerged from a war. And so I can understand people making bad decisions immediately in the aftermath, not making an appropriate decision during a gunfight, but I can see no excuse for not reading the cables, the repeated cables and requests and pleas for help, the pleas for security. I find that inexcusable, and I really think whoever made those decisions should never, ever be in that position again, and I think this really disqualifies her from holding higher office, because it's a serious judgment, it's a serious error of judgment for her to have put ambassadors and diplomats into an area where there wasn't adequate security.

HH: Earlier, a couple of hours ago, my colleague, my friend, Sean Hannity, had former Speaker Gingrich on, who said about your remarks that it's really not all that surprising that a Republican who wouldn't have appointed her in the first place would say that. But I disagree. I think it's very surprising. How did your colleagues react?

RP: Some of them called me bad names and profane names as they were huffing out of the room. Those were Democrats. But on our side, no one's really responded to me on that. I went to lunch, and no one threw anything at me. So no, I think that most of them are disturbed this, also. Many of them have been more disturbed with Ambassador Rice's comments about whether this was pertaining to a movie. But to me, it's always been more important that there wasn't security in advance. I've asked repeatedly in speeches, where in the hell were the Marines, and they say oh, well, the Marines are there to guard the paper, and the host country is to guard the ambassador. And I'm like, well, that may be true in Vienna or Paris, but this is a war zone. And to send our ambassador in and have some guys who can't speak English running around in a Jeep from a militia with a machine gun bungee corded in the back and say oh, this is your protection, that's inexcusable. We have the resources. There's no reason why military resources should not be designated in a war zone if you want to have an embassy there. And they should protect, set up a perimeter. This is the way it should be done. I'm fearful that this will happen again in Libya, that it could happen in Egypt, that it could happen if a government forms in Syria, if we're going to decide to treat embassies the same way in war zones that we treat them in the civilized world, I think it's a huge mistake.