LITTLE ROCK — Our current secretary of state, if not for much longer, has a number of explanations for what happened at Benghazi on her supposed watch. Which figures. For when no explanation will do, the explainer is always tempted to supply a multitude of them, hoping to make up in quantity what each lacks in quality.

As we understand The Hon. Hillary Clinton’s congressional testimony on the matter, her explanation(s) for the massacre at Benghazi boil down to two:

(1) She has taken responsibility for it numerous times and wasn’t responsible for it.

(2) She didn’t have time to be candidwith the American people when the slaughter was in progress, and now that she does, “What difference at this point does it make?” More sophisticated types may call this smart political strategy.

To us it just seems like thrashing about. And its effect is to prolong an embarrassing scandal rather than cut it short, just adding non-explanations to non-performance.

What, oh, what ever happened to that simple, useful, all-purpose phrase they taught us in the Army when we’d fouled up royally-“No excuse, sir”? It so simplifies matters.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 01/31/2013