Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified on the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. During her testimony, she choked up as she spoke of comforting the victims' families and grew angry at accusations that the Obama administration misled the country over whether the Benghazi incident stemmed from a protest. She also depicted the incident as part of a long history of such violence, and the result of regional instability since the “Arab Spring” of popular revolutions that began in 2011.