*Libya attack: GOP goes after the White House, especially Susan Rice*
*Questions about how the Obama administration has handled the attack in
Libya that killed the US ambassador on Sept. 11 have taken a harder
political edge. Some Republicans say UN Ambassador Susan Rice should resign
over faulty reporting of the attack.*
*By Brad Knickerbocker | Christian Science Monitor 12 hrs ago*
As the presidential debates and the election approach, questions about how
the Obama administration
<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Barack+Obama>has handled the
attack in
Libya <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Libya> that killed the
US<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States>ambassador on
Sept. 11 have taken a harder political edge.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike
Huckabee<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Mike+Huckabee>says it’s a
scandal worse than
Watergate <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Watergate> – that the
American people “have flat-out been lied too,” as he put it on Fox
News<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/FOX+News+Network+LLC>Friday.
Eric Fehrenstrom, a senior adviser to Mitt
Romney<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Mitt+Romney>’s
campaign (also speaking on Fox News), says, “President Obama needs to be
held accountable for his administration's attempts to mislead the American
people about what happened in
Benghazi<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Benghazi>
.”
Rep. Peter King <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Peter+T.+King>,
chairman of the Homeland Security
Committee<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Department+of+Homeland+Security>,
has called for the resignation of United
Nations<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+Nations> Ambassador
Susan Rice <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Susan+Rice>.
Blasphemy riots: 6 examples around the
world<
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2012/0912/Blasphemy-riots-6-examples-around-the-world/Innocence-of-Muslims>
The broader theme here (and in many other partisan and conservative blog
comments) is that President Obama wasn’t just unaware of the threat in
Libyaand its violent outcome, but that he and his administration were
purposely
untruthful about what happened.
The headline on Karl Rove <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Karl+Rove>’s
column in the Wall Street
Journal<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+Wall+Street+Journal>this
week was “Obama's Biggest Opponent Is the Truth.”
“Every day, it seems, he attempts to disqualify his opponent through
deliberate and undeniable falsehoods,” Mr. Rove wrote. “This is only one
side of a two-sided coin. The president can't tell the truth about his own
record either.”
In predicting what he’ll be dealing with in his upcoming debates with
Obama, Mr. Romney himself told “Good Morning
America<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Good+Morning+America>”
earlier this month, "I think he's going to say a lot of things that aren't
accurate."
The essence of the charge about Libya by Republicans is that the
administration purposely tried to downplay the incident by asserting that
the attack was spontaneous, prompted by riots tied to the anti-Islam
YouTube<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/YouTube+LLC>video that set
off protests in
Egypt <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Egypt>, Libya, and many other
Muslim countries across North
Africa<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/North+Africa>and the Middle
East <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Middle+East>.
In the days following the attack, Ambassador Rice (and others in the
administration) left the impression that the attackers took advantage of
the riot to quickly gather weapons and target the relatively defenseless
consulate.
Only later did administration officials, including Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Leon+Panetta> and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Hillary+Clinton>,
acknowledge that “terrorists” – some with possible ties (or at least
supported by) Al Qaeda <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Al+Qaeda> –
likely were involved.
In calling for Rice’s resignation, Rep. King told
CNN<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Cable+News+Network>Friday: “I
believe that this was such a failure of foreign policy messaging
and leadership, such a misstatement of facts as was known at the time … for
her to go on all of those shows and in effect be our spokesman for the
world and be misinforming the American people and our allies and countries
around the world, to me, somebody has to pay the price for this.”
The response from
Democrats<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Democratic+Party>in
Congress and the administration is that officials in fact have been
forthcoming as more intelligence became available regarding the attack on
the US consulate that killed Ambassador Christopher
Stevens<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/John+Christopher+Stevens>and
three other embassy personnel.
“I’m deeply disturbed by efforts to find the politics instead of finding
the facts in this debate,” Senate Foreign Relations
Committee<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/U.S.+Senate+Committee+on+Foreign+Relations>chairman
John
Kerry <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/John+Kerry> said in a statement.
“I’m particularly troubled by calls for Ambassador Rice’s resignation. She
is a remarkable public servant for whom the liberation of the Libyan people
has been a personal issue and public mission.”
Also on Friday, the office of Director of National Intelligence James R.
Clapper Jr. <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/James+R.+Clapper> issued a
statement<
http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/96-press-releases-2012/731-statement-on-the-intelligence-related-to-the-terrorist-attack-on-the-u-s-consulate-in-benghazi,-libya>that
sought both to defend the administration and also to deflect some of
the criticism from the White
House<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/The+White+House>
.
“In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess
that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at
our embassy in Cairo <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Cairo+%28Egypt%29>,”
reads the statement, attributed to Shawn Turner, director of public affairs
for the Director of National Intelligence.
“As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to
reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized
terrorist attack carried out by extremists,” the statement continues. “It
remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and
control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their
members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved
were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to Al Qaeda. We
continue to make progress, but there remain many unanswered questions. As
more information becomes available our analysis will continue to evolve and
we will obtain a more complete understanding of the circumstances
surrounding the terrorist attack.”
Gaining definitive information may take a while. Because of security
concerns, FBI agents<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Federal+Bureau+of+Investigation>have
yet to make their way to Benghazi from the Libyan capital of
Tripoli <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Tripoli>.
Meanwhile, the political pummeling from the right continues.
Gov. Huckabee, now a Fox News host, says today’s situation is worse
than President
Nixon <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Richard+Nixon> being forced from
office and President
Clinton<
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Bill+Clinton>being
impeached in the Monica
Lewinsky <
http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Monica+Lewinsky> affair
because “nobody was killed” in those earlier episodes.
--
Almaz Abraha
*Imagination is more important than knowledge.*
Albert Einstein* *
Received on Sun Sep 30 2012 - 20:20:27 EDT
