Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is
reportedly being considered as a possible replacement for Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, who is believed to be leaving soon to
spend more time with Bill (i.e., to start her 2016 presidential
campaign). Because of Rice’s central role in the Obama
administration’s attempt to deceive the American people about what
happened in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, she should be denied
confirmation if she is nominated.
Everyone whose name isn’t Romney must by now understand what
happened on September 11 and how the Obama team spent weeks lying
and spinning to cover it up and avoid the blame they richly
deserve.
Some weeks before September 11, some knucklehead produced a
cheap video that portrayed Islam in an unkind (if not entirely
inaccurate) light. Predictably, there were protests and riots in
whatever corners of the world Islamists chose to riot. One of them
was Cairo.
One of them was not Benghazi. On September 11, in the absence of
any protests, a mob of armed attackers swarmed the U.S. consulate
in Benghazi, beginning an attack that lasted about seven hours and
spread from the consulate to a nearby CIA outpost. Two former Navy
SEALs, then employed by the CIA, violated orders and left the
outpost. They headed to the consulate to help the other Americans
under attack. After failing to find Ambassador Christopher Stevens
or anyone else, they returned to the CIA facility, and were
attacked and killed by terrorists there.
Throughout the attack, several requests for armed assistance
were sent by the SEALs and/or the others who died. According to a
CIA statement, no one in the CIA denied those requests.
Nevertheless, U.S. armed forces — including fighter/attack
aircraft stationed about 350 miles away in Sicily — weren’t
ordered in. Again, the attack went on for about seven hours. The
F-18s could have been there in less than an hour.
Afterward, the White House and the whole Obama regime went into
full spin mode. On September 12, Obama said that we’d find the
perps and bring them to justice. He didn’t — despite what he and
Candy Crowley later insisted — label the attack a terrorist act.
To the contrary, for weeks the administration spun the story that
the attack was a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Islam video. It
was a lie then, it is a lie now, and they knew it all along.
Nevertheless, the lovely and charming Ambassador Rice went on
five — count ‘em, five — Sunday talk shows the weekend after the
attack to insist that the Benghazi riot was a reaction to the
video. During one she declared that it was “definitely not” a
terrorist attack. By then this was an obvious lie. So how did she
come to say it?
President Obama, in full indignation mode, said a couple of days
ago that Rice was just making a “presentation” on the Sunday shows,
and that no one should pick on her because she had nothing to do
with what happened in Benghazi. This explains why she was asked to
go out on the spin tour: she was the State Department’s Sergeant
Schultz, who knew nothing beyond the talking points she was given.
She was sent to spin a lie without the ability to answer any
question outside the “presentation” the White House prepared for
her.
Rice was made to say certain things the administration knew were
false. So who crafted her dishonest message?
By now everyone who isn’t named Romney also knows pretty much
everything that former CIA Director David Petraeus testified in a
secret congressional hearing on Friday. Petraeus committed the sin
of telling the truth, at least this time. After the incident, he
reportedly told some congressional intelligence committee members
that the anti-Islam video was implicated in the attack. But on
Friday, he told Congress — apparently in very specific terms —
that he believed from the day of the attack that the Benghazi
incident was perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliates. For those of you
who are students at Berkeley or MSNBC employees: that means the
attackers were terrorists and the CIA probably knew that from the
time the attack started.
Petraeus also testified that the CIA’s prepared talking points
were changed by someone outside the agency before Rice delivered
her “presentation” on the Sunday shows. Nobody knows who, but it
had to be either her bosses at State, meaning Hillary Clinton, or
at the White House, meaning David Axelrod and Obama.
Obama said Rice made a “presentation” and that anyone who takes
issue with it should criticize him, not her. “Presentation” is a
very odd term in the context Obama used it. But we should take it
at face value. What that means is that she was sent out to say
something specific on behalf of the administration she serves. When
she said that the attack on Benghazi was “definitely not” a
terrorist attack, she was presenting Obama’s view, despite the
facts.
To blame the CIA’s talking points for Rice’s lies, as the White
House is doing, is risible. Obama is to blame for the lies. But
doesn’t Rice, as a senior official, have any responsibility for
what she says officially?
Of course she does, and the proper place to hold her accountable
would be within the White House. But that is as risible an idea as
blaming the CIA for what she said. With Barack Obama in charge, the
only way to hold her accountable is in a confirmation hearing,
either for reappointment to her current post or in considering her
rumored nomination for Secretary of State.
No one should be rewarded for behavior such as hers. If she is
nominated, Senate Republicans will have the responsibility to
question her closely, demand answers about the Benghazi lies, and
block her nomination. Rice will neither recant nor repent. She
should not be confirmed to any government post. Not even
postmistress of her local zip code.
