On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice — a key figure in the political cover-up that resulted in the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya — met with GOP senators to discuss her original ill-worded statements. The senators came away with more questions than answers (go figure), and the American people are left wondering why a president of the United States would put politics ahead of the very lives he swore to defend.
As noted in a report on Fox News, following the meeting with Rice, Republican senators left “feeling more confused and ‘disturbed’ than before the meeting.”
“I’m significantly troubled by the answers we got and didn’t get,” said McCain, R-Ariz.
The lawmakers said the meeting covered questions about security at the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi before the Sept. 11 attacks, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, and about Rice’s comments afterward.
Rice, U.S. envoy to the United Nations, went on network television five days after the attacks to say the strikes were “spontaneous” and seemed to grow out of a protest of an anti-Islamic video.
However, reports later revealed no evidence of a protest outside the Consulate, and U.S. intelligence officials later said the strike appeared to be a pre-planned terrorist attack.
Rice has maintained that she was using talking points provided to her from unclassified intelligence reports based on the best available information.
Of course there was no protest. Of course the murders were not the result of anger of an Internet video. We all know this. But what the media has refused to cover is why was this said? Why did Barack Obama go for weeks saying that the attack was spontaneous when it wasn’t? Why did he send Susan Rice to the political shows to say it wasn’t an act of terror when it was?
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who as at the meeting with Susan Rice, said Rice’s comments were “disconnected from reality.”
“I’m more disturbed now than I was before that the 16 September explanation of how four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya by Ambassador Rice,” he told reporters. He argued that her comments, in which she erroneously suggested the violence may have resulted from spontaneous riots over an anti-Muslim video, were not only wrong in hindsight, but were also “disconnected from reality” based on information that was available at the time.
“If anybody had been looking at the threats coming out of Benghazi, Libya, it [would] jump out at you this was [an] Al-Qaeda storm in the making,” he said. “I’m very disappointed in our intelligence community, they failed in many ways, but with a little bit of inquiry and curiosity I think it would be pretty clear that to explain this episode as related to a video that created a mob that turned into a riot was far afield.”
After the meeting, the White House had a response as well. Believe it or not, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney actually told reporters that there are “no unanswered questions” regarding what happened with Susan Rice.
So… she got some bad talking points. That’s their defense? In the presidential debate, Barack Obama implied (with the help of the moderator) that he said the Benghazi attack was terrorism from day 1. But for weeks afterward, he avoided the “terror” label, and instead pushed the Internet video story. If he “knew,” then why did he keep promoting a false story? If he “knew,” then did he have a different set of talking points than Rice? If so, why?
As noted on National Review, after the meeting with GOP senators, Susan Rice issued her own statement:
Rice: In the course of the meeting, we explained that the talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key aspect: there was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi. While, we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case, the intelligence assessment has evolved. We stressed that neither I nor anyone else in the Administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the Administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved.
The report blasts the statement out of the water and includes facts such as a report by CBS News which states, ” Rice was privy to both the talking points and the original assessment. The original assessment referred to the attack as an act of terror linked to al-Qaeda, yet Rice made no mention of terrorism or al-Qaeda when she appeared on five national talk shows.”
The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama and his administration wanted the American people to think that they were all safe from terror. That Libya was now a peaceful country… that Obama had “gotten” bin Laden. A real act of terror, so close to the election, would surely not look good for the Obama team. So they covered it up. They put politics ahead of security, and four Americans died.
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