The House has released a scathing report faulting President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the failure to provide adequate security to the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The report also found that the White House lied about the attack on more than one occasion, and Clinton even lied about it under oath.

House Republicans have concluded that the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies bear no blame for failing to halt the terrorist assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year, releasing a report Tuesday that said President Obama and the State Department set up the military for failure.

The report also found that plenty of intelligence presaged the attack, but the White House and State Department — including the secretary at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton — failed to heed the warnings.

In the most damning conclusion, House Republicans said Mr. Obama’s team lied about the attacks afterward, first by blaming mob violence spawned by an anti-Muslim video, and then wrongly saying it had misled the public because it was trying to protect an FBI investigation.

“This progress report reveals a fundamental lack of understanding at the highest levels of the State Department as to the dangers presented in Benghazi, Libya, as well as a concerted attempt to insulate the Department of State from blame following the terrorist attacks,” the GOP investigation concluded in its 46-page report. (Read More)

Clinton claimed that she had not seen a request for more security, but as it turns out she not only received a request, she signed it and denied it.

“The specific security requests pertaining to Benghazi, you know were handled by the security professionals in the department,” Clinton told Congress in January. “I didn’t see those requests, they didn’t come to me, I didn’t approve them, I didn’t deny them.”

The House report suggests that Clinton received a request for more security from Gene Cretz, who preceded Christopher Stevens as ambassador to Libya.

“On April 19, 2012, the response cable from the Department of State to Embassy Tripoli, bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature, acknowledges Ambassador Cretz’s request for additional security but instead articulates a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission,” the House report says. (Read More)

No doubt Clinton is sitting around somewhere thinking “What difference does it make?” I’m thinking that having added security might have made a big difference for Ambassador Stevens and the other Americans who lost their lives.

Maggie’s Notebook has more on the House report nad Hillary’s lies.