"What difference does it
make?" is a phrase commonly attributed to former U.S. Secretary of State
Hilary Clinton.
On January 23, 2013 Clinton was
questioned by the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the
death of four Americans in the American Embassy in Libya.
==Excerpt of the Hearing
Transcript[1]:==
Clinton : Well no it’s the fact.
Number two, I would recommend highly you read both what the ARB said about it
and the classified ARB because even today, there are questions being raised.
Now, we have no doubt they were terrorist, they were militants, they attacked
us, they killed our people. But what was going on and why they were doing what
they were doing is still unknown—
Johnson : No, again, we were misled
that there were supposedly protests and that something sprang out of that - an
assault sprang out of that - and that was easily ascertained that was not the
fact, and the American people could have known that within days and they didn’t
know that.
Clinton : With all due respect, the
fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it
because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill
some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to
figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever
happening again Senator. Now honestly, I will do my best to answer your
questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to
get to the best information. The IC has a process I understand going with the
other committees to explain how these talking points came out. But you know, to
be clear it is from my perspective less important today looking backwards as to
why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice,
and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on the meantime.
Johnson : Okay, thank you Madame
Secretary.
==Rise to Popular Catchphrase==
The phrase "What difference at
this point does it make?" quickly became lampooned and morphed into the
derivative "What Difference Does It Make?"[2][3] The subsequent
phrase has been used in numerous cartoons and news articles[4].
== References ==
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