This column just may anger the good folks who are not fans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I always feel being fair and honest is better than being politically correct.

The general agreement among those of us on the right is that the current administration did nothing to help the besieged Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Mrs. Clinton, the Secretary of state at the time, turned a deaf ear to their call for help.

The argument that the embassy in Benghazi was not properly staffed with security forces in hindsight is correct. The blame is properly placed on Mrs. Clinton for an inadequate force structure on the ground; however the lack of timely military response is unfairly blamed on her.

A military operation on the scale and in the time frame that existed and with the distances involved could not and more properly should not have been deployed. Had a reaction force been sitting on C-141 transports in Italy (our closest forces) cocked and locked and ready to parachute into battle, they did not have a Drop Zone (DZ) close enough to the fight to have been in time to save the four gallant Americans who died. Parachuting at night into a city, any city, is asking for far more causalities from the jump than the four we lost in the battle. A drop zone needs to be fairly large and as free of obstacles as possible.

Attempting to land a large military transport aircraft at the airport near Benghazi without total control of the airport could very easily have been a major disaster.

If we dropped a force of highly trained paratroopers into Libya, they could move to contact at the speed of three miles per hour. That much speed is dependent on encountering no resistance from the Islamic fundamentalists on the ground. Our forces would have been engaged with an enemy with transportation and a logistical support system. The enemy that could have evacuated their wounded, reinforced and resupplied with all classes of supply at will.

The Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton can be blamed for a lack of HUMINT (Human Intelligence) on the ground; the American left objects to working with criminals, thieves and villains, thus degrading HUMINT assets. If we need intelligence on Islamic Terrorists, we will not find it talking with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Liberal party line is that we don’t need to work with unscrupulous folks — we can gather all the data we need from electronic and satellite intelligence. Nice in theory, horrible in practice.

The problem for Mrs. Clinton is in the coverup. The entire Obama Administration refused to completely blame the terrorists and their lack of preparedness, and jumped to blame an internet video. I viewed that video; it was very poorly done and of no merit on its own. It said horrible things about Islam and Mohamed, but none worse than some American late-night comedians. The party line at the time of Benghazi was that Osama bin Laden was dead and terrorism was on the run. An inconvenient truth was that the administration’s Libyan policy was a tragic mistake and amateurishly done.

So what is the take away from the Benghazi congressional investigation? As stated before, it is the coverup, not the alleged crime. Mrs. Clinton has committed a number of felonies in her attempt to hide her e-mails. Mrs. Clinton openly but unknowingly confessed, under oath, to having classified documents on her unclassified private email server. She testified to having her classified itinerary on her server. Mrs. Clinton then destroyed them unlawfully. For some reason I will never understand, she is getting a pass on committing violations of the United States Code and State Department regulations. Mrs. Clinton even violated an order from President Obama not to use her private server.

Folks do not have to look very hard to find a good bit to dislike about Mrs. Clinton. That said, the lack of a military response in time to save the lives of four brave Americans should not be laid at her feet. As much as it pains me to say it, she chose the proper course of action in postponing an attack until intelligence and a proper operations order and order of battle could be developed.

Operation Eagle Claw and the Mayaguez operation are a testimony to poorly planned operations with inadequate intelligence. Successful military operations are a child of meticulous planning and coordination; rushing into a battle blind and dumb does more harm than good.