Hillary Clinton attempted to put criticism of her handling of the 2012 Benghazi terror attack into context Tuesday during the first Democratic primary debate, urging her critics to “remember what was going on” at the time.

“We had a murderous dictator, [Moammar] Gadhafi, who had American blood on his hands, as I’m sure you remember, threatening to massacre large numbers of the Libyan people,” Clinton said of her push, while secretary of state, to intervene in the Libyan civil war in 2012.