Tag Archives: Rice

December 13, 2012 · 7:59 PM

Susan Rice: A Victim of GOP Hypocrisy?

I reject the notion that the three Senators who questioned UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s professional competence as the next Secretary of State was racially motivated.

I do believe it was unabashedly partisan in nature. It seemed to be a new angle toward side-lining the President’s political agenda for the next four years.

Mother Jones

[...]

The outrage expressed by Republican lawmakers—spurred by the ambassador reciting intelligence-community-generated talking points that turned out to be partially inaccurate—is very different from their response to another administration official named Rice who was accused of misleading the American public on a matter of national security.

That, of course, is Condoleezza Rice. When George W. Bush nominated Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, some of the same Senate Republicans who are currently attacking Susan Rice supported Condi wholeheartedly, despite her role in helping to make the case for war in Iraq based on bogus intelligence. Back then, Republicans were much more willing to chalk up Condoleezza Rice’s parroting of flawed intel to well-intentioned mistakes as opposed to outright deception, even when the evidence said otherwise. Here’s how some of Susan Rice’s most vocal critics responded to the Bush administration’s disastrous handling of pre-war Iraq intelligence and the nomination of Condoleezza Rice.

The hypocrisy of Republicans’ attack on Susan Rice | Michael Williams (guardian.co.uk)
Rice vs. Rice: What changed for John McCain since 2004? (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
GOPers Criticizing Susan Rice Over Benghazi Defended Condoleezza Rice From Similar Charges (motherjones.com)
Republicans Attacking Susan Rice Gave Condoleezza Rice A Pass On Intelligence Failures (alan.com)
GOP cooks up new excuse to oppose Rice (tv.msnbc.com)
Hypocrisy Served With Rice (personalliberty.com)
FRANK J. FLEMING: What’s Wrong With Susan Rice? The Republicans’ opposition to Susan Rice’s … (pjmedia.com)

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Filed under GOP Malfeasance, UN Abassador Susan Rice

Tagged as Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Iraq, Iraq War, Republican, Rice, Susan Rice, United States Secretary of State

December 4, 2012 · 12:16 AM

Oops! McCain Once Offered Identical Assessment As Susan Rice On Benghazi Attack

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

It will be extremely interesting to see Senator McCain wiggle out of this conundrum…

Think Progress

Just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said there were “demonstrations” at the U.S. diplomatic mission there and that the attackers “seized this opportunity to attack our consulate.” McCain also said during this Sept. 14 press conference on Capitol Hill that he wasn’t certain whether al-Qaeda perpetrated the assault.

Yet McCain has been leading a smear campaign against U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice for essentially making the same assessment two days later on the Sept. 16 Sunday talks shows. Making clear that a more thorough forthcoming investigation would provide better information for “definitive conclusions,” here’s what Rice said about the Benghazi attack on that day, from CBS’s Face the Nation:

SUSAN RICE: Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy — sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that — in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.

McCain has since blasted Rice for making this assessment. Here’s what McCain said on CNN last month during the height of his smear campaign against the U.N. Ambassador:

MCCAIN: It was obvious within 24 hours that the station chief from the CIA had said this was a terrorist attack. It was obvious to one and all that this was not a “spontaneous demonstration” because in real time, they saw there was no demonstration. … Everybody knew that it was an al Qaeda attack, and she continued to tell the world through all of the talk shows that it was a “spontaneous demonstration” sparked by a video. That is not competence in my view

But McCain’s analysis of what occurred in Benghazi in the days after the attack on Sept. 14 mirrors Rice’s assessment during her Sept. 16 Sunday show appearances, saying that the attackers took advantage of a demonstration at the U.S. diplomatic mission:

MCCAIN: It’s hard to know exactly what took place and how long it was planned, and — I don’t have that information. I know very well that there were demonstrations, that there was a group of either al-Qaida or some radical Islamists who — about 15 of them, armed with RPGs and other lethal weapons, that seized this opportunity to attack our consulate. And it was an act of terror. It wasn’t an act of a mob getting out of control. We should understand that. This was a calculated act of terror on the part of a small group of jihadists, not a mob that somehow attacked and sacked our embassy.

So both McCain and Susan Rice believed at roughly the same point after the the Sept. 11 Benghazi attacks that the terrorists took advantage of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam video at the U.S. diplomatic mission there. And like Rice, McCain couldn’t say definitively if it was al Qaeda. When asked if it was al-Qaeda during his Sept. 14 press conference, McCain said, “It certainly was extremist elements. If it’s not al-Qaida, it’s certainly one of the affiliated organizations.”

As is now known, on Sept. 16, Rice was presenting the assessment of what happened in Benghazi that was given to her by the U.S. intelligence community and that assessment turned out to be inaccurate. CIA officials initially thought that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack, but intelligence officials agreed that a more general term of “extremists” would suffice in Rice’s talking points.

The Arizona Republican has also claimed that Rice should have changed her assessment because shortly before her appearance on Face the Nation, a top Libyan official “said that this was an al Qaeda attack.” But in fact, the official, Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf, didn’t give a definitive assessment and said only “a few of them” were connected to the terror group, and that others were “affiliates and maybe sympathizers.” But even if el-Magariaf had been more sure, it would have been irresponsible for Rice to endorse and share a view she knew to be inconsistent with what U.S. intelligence officials had provided.

Palin: Racist, Sexist Claims Distract From Susan Rice Competency (washington.cbslocal.com)
The Ultimate Guide To McCain’s Smear Campaign Against Susan Rice (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
McCain Attacks Rice On Assessment He Once Held (huffingtonpost.com)
Susan Rice to meet with McCain on Benghazi (cbsnews.com)
McCain Backs Away From Benghazi Conspiracies (thinkprogress.org)
Would You Like Some Crow With That Rice, Senator McCain? (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
McCain Gets Petty On Susan Rice Attacks: It’s ‘Meaningless To Take Out Core Al-Qaeda’ (thinkprogress.org)

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Filed under John McCain, Terrorism, UN Abassador Susan Rice

Tagged as al Qaeda, Benghazi, Face The Nation, John McCain, Mccain, Rice, Susan Rice, United States Ambassador to the United Nations

November 29, 2012 · 1:51 AM

Rice vs. Rice: What changed for John McCain since 2004?

Remember Condoleeza Rice’s ’smoking gun’ turning into a “mushroom cloud” statements on all the Sunday talk shows to justify the Bush Administration declaring war in Iraq?

Remember Condoleeza Rice’s answer to a question at the 9/11 Commission hearings: “I believe it said, “Bin Laden determined to strike inside the United States”.

Just sayin’…she gave very bad intel and all one heard was crickets when it came to the GOP criticizing Rice’s remarks. What’s so different in the Susan Rice instance?

Salon

The Republican senators attacking Susan Rice today never batted an eyelash when Condi Rice advanced bad intel

The president has just been reelected and looks to replace his secretary of state with a Ms. Rice who has already served in a senior administration position. The minority party in the Senate is threatening to obstruct her confirmation because she propagated faulty intelligence. The administration defends her, saying she merely recited the most credible intelligence of the moment and had no intention of misleading anyone, but the senators’ questions persist.

No, that’s not today! That was eight years ago when George W. Bush appointed his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to be the nation’s top diplomat a week after winning reelection.

Today, for the second straight day, President Obama’s U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, whom he may nominate to be secretary of state, met with recalcitrant Republican senators on Capitol Hill to try to assuage them. And today, for the second straight day, the Republican senators immediately found reporters and informed the world that they were not satisfied. Today it was Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Bob Corker. Yesterday it was Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Lindsey Graham, along with the ringleader of the opposition, Sen. John McCain. The senators say that Rice misled the American people when she went on Sunday morning political talk shows after the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack and, citing talking points provided to her by the intelligence community that later proved to be false, said the attack grew out of a protest against an anti-Islam film.

Eight years ago, when Bush appointed Condoleezza Rice in 2004, Democrats said that she misled the American people when she propagated intelligence that later proved to be false. In her case, it was about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. She also sent a letter to Senate Democrats in March 2003 claiming that the U.S. had briefed U.N. weapons inspectors on what they knew about Iraq’s WMD program (they had not). And Democrats also charged that she concealed the CIA’s doubts about whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger — she said there was “consensus” within the administration when in fact there was not; the story turned out to be false.

So what did the Republican senators questioning Susan Rice today say about the Condoleezza Rice committing the very same alleged crime then? A Nexis search turns up nothing from Collins or Graham of relevance. (Ayotte and Corker were not yet in the Senate.) McCain actually defended her. All three then-senators voted for her confirmation.

Whereas McCain is today giving the intelligence community the benefit of the doubt and placing the blame on Susan Rice, in 2004 his finger was pointed squarely at the intelligence community. “The president of the United States was told by the director of intelligence that the weapons of mass destruction information was a ‘slam dunk … So it was great failures, and we all know that the CIA has to be reformed,” McCain said on “Meet the Press” in November 2004 while discussing Rice’s nomination. A few days later he told Lou Dobbs on CNN: “I serve on the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, and there is no doubt that the CIA is dysfunctional and there needs to be significant and fundamental changes made.”

During Rice’s confirmation hearings, where Democrats grilled her on the faulty intelligence, Rice echoed McCain. “Obviously, there were problems with the intelligence concerning Iraq (and) weapons of mass destruction,” Rice said.

But she should not be held responsible for their mistake, she explained. Asked why she told everyone in the lead-up to the war that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, Rice replied: “The majority of agencies in the intelligence community did. I was representing, Senator — and I’ve made this available for the record — the views of that majority.” She even expressed outrage at the CIA’s failure: “We cannot have a situation where the director of the CIA, when asked about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, tells the president of the United States that it’s a quote, ‘slam dunk,’ when nothing could have been further from the truth.”

Continue Reading Here…

Jon Stewart Tears Into John McCain & Lindsay Graham For Hypocritical Outrage Over Susan Rice (mediaite.com)
Would You Like Some Crow With That Rice, Senator McCain? (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
GOP cooks up new excuse to oppose Rice (tv.msnbc.com)
Republicans Attacking Susan Rice Gave Condoleezza Rice A Pass On Intelligence Failures (alan.com)
The hypocrisy of Republicans’ attack on Susan Rice | Michael Williams (guardian.co.uk)

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Filed under UN Abassador Susan Rice

Tagged as CIA, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Iraq, John McCain, Rice, Susan Rice, United States

November 26, 2012 · 12:32 AM

Monday Blog Roundup 11-26-2012

Give the Texas Secessionists a Boat!
Buh-bye Talk of secession is heating up again in Texas. I know, I know, many of you ..

The Slow March to Gridlock
The New York Times has a great piece on the U.S. Senate’s slide into gridlock, includ..

McCain Backs Off Susan Rice Smear Campaign
Shortly after news broke about a fatal attack on the American consulate in Benghazi,..

Susan Rice, Condi Rice and Republican hypocrisy
U.N. Ambassador (and latest target of Republican vitriol) Susan Rice President Obama..

After Sandy: The Perils of Coastline Construction
After Sandy: The Perils of Coastline Construction

GOP Starting to Rebel Against No-Tax-Hikes Pledge
With the fiscal cliff looming for the United States, some Republican members of Congr..

John McCain: Abortion Issue Should Be Left Alone By Republicans
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday urged members of his party to leave abortion di..

What We Learn From Mitt Romney’s Post-Mortem
What We Learn From Mitt Romney’s Post-Mortem

NY Times Warns On Climate Change: ‘Fear Death By Water’, Rising Seas L..
The NY Times (finally) goes apocalyptic on climate change. Here’s the cover image of..

Video: Sputtering McCain approaches farce with Rice attacks
Rachel Maddow exposes the baselessness of the ridiculous hectoring by Senator John M..

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Filed under U.S. Politics

Tagged as Barack Obama, Benghazi, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Rachel Maddow, Republican, Rice, Susan Rice

November 25, 2012 · 6:03 PM

Would You Like Some Crow With That Rice, Senator McCain?

The Daily Dish – Andrew Sullivan

The irascible douche now acknowledges there is no evidence that Susan Rice was responsible for editing CIA talking points after the Benghazi attack, and that the DNI gave her what she subsequently went on TV with. End of scandal. No formal retractionor apology of course:

Today’s news comes just a week after McCain went on national television and claimed that Rice’s “talking points came from the White House, not from the DNI. He added on Fox that “I think it’s patently obvious that the talking points that Ambassador Rice had didn’t come from the CIA. It came from the White House.” For weeks, McCain has lambasted the administration forengaging in “either a cover-up or the worst kind of incompetence” on the Benghazi attack.

Of course, McCain believed it was perfectly obvious that Saddam had WMDs in Iraq. And so did I. I’ve learned to wait for the facts a little bit longer before jumping to conclusions of conspiracy or mendacity.

Soledad O’Brien destroys GOP over Benghazi, Susan Rice (video) (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
McCain backs down attack on Susan Rice’s Benghazi comments (tv.msnbc.com)
McCain Officially Admits He Was Wrong on Benghazi Without Admitting It (themoderatevoice.com)
McCain Backs Away From Benghazi Conspiracies (thinkprogress.org)
John McCain Softens Opposition To Susan Rice Nomination (huffingtonpost.com)
McCain, Graham keep heat on Rice, but appear to soften attacks (foxnews.com)

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Filed under John McCain, UN Abassador Susan Rice

Tagged as Benghazi, Central Intelligence Agency, Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, John McCain, Mccain, Rice, Susan Rice, White House

November 16, 2012 · 8:07 AM

Soledad O’Brien destroys GOP over Benghazi, Susan Rice (video)

Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nevada) is apparently not on the same page as Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham on this issue…although his original statement was meant to be the standard talking point the two senators want to send out to the press, Rep. Heck unitentionally muddies the waters a bit…

America Blog – John Aravosis

I am seriously loving CNN’s Soledad O’Brien of late. Have always enjoyed her work, but lately the woman has been on fire when it comes to dealing with political types who are clearly playing games with the truth. (As part of my homage to Soledad, see this post detailing her feat of “Sol-splaining” the truth to political hacks.)

Today it was GOP Rep. Joe Heck of Nevada, who was on Soledad’s show to talk about John McCain and Lindsay Graham trying to kill UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s expected nomination to be Secretary of State. McCain and Graham are upset with Rice because they thinks he lied, or didn’t know enough, about the situation in Libya immediately following the attack on our consulate and CIA outpost there.

Soledad is not impressed.

During their talk, Soledad pointed out – as I do in my post this morning – that McCain and Graham seem to be taking a hypocritical stance on Susan Rice’s nomination since they didn’t seem to have any problem with Condi Rice’s nomination to the same job, even though she did something far worse than Susan Rice. Condi aided the Bush administration in lying its way in to a war, Iraq, that has cost us trillions of dollars and countless American, and Iraqi, lives. That’s a lot bigger than 4 casualties at a US consulate in Libya.

In response, GOP Rep. Heck , who’s on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the administration over the Libya attack, appears to exonerate Susan Rice, and instead prove that Condi Rice should have been the one blocked from becoming Secretary of State. The video is below, but here’s NYT columnist Charles Blow’s take on what Heck just said:

CHARLES BLOW: What I’m trying to figure out, are you saying that Condoleeza Rice actually should have known, because she had more intimacy with the information [WMD in Iraq] and then still said something that she knew was wrong, and that in fact Susan Rice is a sacrificial lamb because she was put out as the face of the administration for something that she didn’t know anything [about], so in fact that’s more of a defense of Susan Rice than it is a condemnation of Susan Rice. That’s how it sounds to me.

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: That’s what it sounds like to me, so, forgive me sir, will you walk us through this one more time. You think it’s different because Condoleeza Rice actually had first-hand knowledge?

And Heck just continues reiterating that Susan Rice’s situation is far worse than Condis’ because Condi was heavily involved in Iraq war planning and Susan Rice was not heavily involved in what happened in Benghazi. Which only goes to prove that Susan Rice shouldn’t be the Republican party’s scapegoat.

Then again, far be it for the Republicans to turn down the chance to beat up on a woman, and a black woman at that. Rice should consider herself fortunate that she wasn’t a Latina too.

Here’s the video – great television, and a great job by Soledad and Charles Blow.

Obama Defends Susan Rice Against ‘Outrageous’ McCain, Graham Attack (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
Rep. Heck: Condoleeza and Susan Rice both had wrong information (cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com)
McBitter McCain too busy hammering Susan Rice for the cameras to attend briefing on Benghazi (dailykos.com)
Rep. Heck: Fmr. Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice and Amb. Susan Rice both had wrong information (startingpoint.blogs.cnn.com)
John McCain Supported Condi Rice After Massive Intelligence Failure (goodolewoody.wordpress.com)
Republican Congressman Joe Heck Baffles Soledad O’Brien With Bizarre Quasi-Defense Of Susan Rice (mediaite.com)
John McCain Supported Condi Rice After Massive Intelligence Failure (thinkprogress.org)
McCain And Graham Defended Condoleeza Rice Over Iraq WMD Testimony (buzzfeed.com)

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Filed under GOP Hypocrisy, Soledad O’Brien, UN Abassador Susan Rice

Tagged as Benghazi, Condoleezza Rice, Iraq, Joe Heck, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Mccain, Republican, Republicans, Rice, Soledad O'Brien, Susan Rice

· 7:22 AM

The Ultimate Guide To McCain’s Smear Campaign Against Susan Rice

This is the same John McCain who referred to then Senator Barack Obama as “that one” in a 2008 presidential debate. It seems Senator McCain is still bitter over the loss of that race.