GOP pre-emptive attack on Susan Rice misfires - USA Today editorial [View all]

[Bill USA]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/editorials/2012/11/25/susan-rice-benghazi-attack-criticism/1725999/

Last week, Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona vowed to block confirmation of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, if she is tapped to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of State. Not to be outdone, nearly 100 House Republicans, led by Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, signed a letter charging that a Rice nomination would undermine U.S. credibility abroad.

Their complaint? Misleading comments Rice made 10 weeks ago on Sunday talk shows about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Working from talking points put together by intelligence officials and later edited by others, Rice peddled the story that the attack sprang from a spontaneous protest, spurred by an anti-Muslim video produced by an American.

That account turned out to be wrong, but it's hardly a reason to block Rice's potential nomination. After all, if misleading comments based on flawed intelligence were disqualifying, Colin Powell would have been forced to resign as George W. Bush's secretary of State and Condoleezza Rice never would have succeeded Powell. Powell's powerful speech before the United Nations in 2003, proclaiming proof of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, helped push the United States into a misguided war. Condoleezza Rice also touted the story line about Iraq's supposed nuclear program, warning on CNN that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." No such weapons were found.

Susan Rice's comments about events in Benghazi are at best a sideshow. Instead of obsessing about what she said on TV after the tragedy, lawmakers ought to be more concerned about finding out what went wrong and preventing a repeat. Why weren't security warnings heeded and requests for more protection granted? As U.N. ambassador, Rice most likely had zero involvement with those decisions.
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if Rice's comments on tv were a 'sideshow' McCain's and Graham's actions would qualify as a vaudeville act. McCain and Graham have shown Republicans never pass up an opportunity to engage in hypocritical political opportunism at the expense of responsible governance. While McCain and Graham are showing what consummate clowns they are their antics are an offense to a responsible public servant such as Suzan Rice and taking time away from actually getting something practical done.

McCain and Graham might as well be dancing around in clown suits and whacking each other with rubber chickens. This at least would be more forethright than pretending to be doing anything constructive in their offensive, nonsensical questioning of Rice.