Cynical, but more or less correct:
The hundred pages of Benghazi e-mails released this week tell us almost nothing about how four Americans came to die so tragically in that Libyan city. But they are a case study in why nothing works in Washington.
Rather than reading these messages for their substance on Benghazi (on which officials were still basically clueless three days after the attack), try perusing them as an illustration of how the bureaucracy responds to crisis — especially when officials know they will be under the media spotlight.
What you find is a 100-page novella of turf-battling and backside-covering.
Also: damning. We were told that this administration was different, somehow. Which was, of course… a false thing, told to people who are now learning better, and we have to remember that people do not deserve to be lied to, even if they had been warned ahead of time. The point is that Barack Obama – and his entire staff, explicitly including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – is a creature of the system, not its nemesis.