Republican senators stepped up their campaign against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice this week, after she met with them in an attempt to defuse their claim that she intentionally misled the public about the September attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Rice, considered President Obama’s first choice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, said on Sept. 16 that the attack had been a spontaneous assault by “extremists,” when it was in fact a planned raid by al Qaida–affiliated terrorists.
The CIA has said that it gave Rice talking points that made no mention of local al Qaida links, in order to protect Libyan sources and its own investigation. But after meeting Rice, the Republican senators said they remained convinced that she spearheaded a pre-election White House cover-up, and vowed to block her nomination as secretary of state. “We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn’t get,” said Sen. John McCain.
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We’re in danger of getting “lost in the sideshows,” said Andrew C. McCarthy in NationalReview.com. Rice “did not lie to the country for her own benefit,” nor did the CIA. It was to protect Obama, whose policies of appeasing Islamists in Libya left four dead, and who sold us the lie that al Qaida had been defeated. Congress mustn’t let the Rice farrago “become a distraction from the truth.”
It could actually lead us to the truth, said Thomas F. Schaller in The Baltimore Sun. Even if McCain is playing for the cameras, he is asking important questions about what the White House did “before, during, and especially after the attacks.” A confirmation hearing for Rice could “be contentious and may get ugly,” but it would provide the detailed answers we all deserve about this tragic incident and its troubling aftermath.
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