Thanks to the lies of Fox News and the Republicans in Congress, one of the most qualified people ever to be considered for Secretary of State has withdraw her name from consideration. Susan Rice, whose only fault was repeating the official talking points regarding the attack in Benghazi, has decided that the confirmation process is “simply not worth it.”
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who drew heavy criticism from Republicans over her statements after the September attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission, withdrew her name from consideration for secretary of state on Thursday.
In a letter to President Barack Obama, she said “the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive, and costly — to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country.”
Obama acknowledged her letter in a statement that described her as “an extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant.”
She was thought to be a frontrunner for the post, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would vacate as soon as a successor is confirmed.
Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill appeared on Meet The Press today and defended United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. Asked about Susan Rice and the roadblock Republicans are building to deny her the job of Secretary of State, McCaskill said;
“I think it’s terribly unfair what has happened to Susan Rice.
“I do not understand for the life of me — the talking-points came from the intelligence community, yet you don’t hear one criticism of [former CIA Director] David Petraeus. It was his shop that produced the talking-points that Susan Rice talked about, and she mentioned al-Qaeda in the interviews.”
McCaskill also compared Susan Rice to Condoleezza Rice, who worked in the Bush administration and promoted the Bush talking-points making it possible to start the war in Iraq.
“I mean, really? Is there a double-standard here? It appears to most of us that there is. A very unfair one. This is a strong, smart, capable, accomplished woman, and I think there are too many people over there that are looking for a scalp.”
Republicans led by John McCain and Lindsey Graham have vowed not to support Susan Rice’s nomination for Secretary of State if she is nominated by President Obama, and they claim the talking-points Rice used to describe the events in Benghazi is their reason to deny her the nomination. McCaskill correctly pointed out that these talking-points did not come from Rice, but this little fact makes no difference to Republicans.
Tom Ricks went into the lion’s den and poked the lion right in the eyes. Mr Ricks, the author of The Generals and Senior Fellow at Center for a New American Security, went on Fox News and told the Republican network the truth, that Benghazi was pushed by the network because they thought there were some political benefits for the Republican party.
I’m pretty sure Tom Ricks has permanently lost his pass to Fox News.
John McCain and his Republican friends would not be happy hearing this. According to official reports, the White House had absolutely nothing to do with replacing the words, “al Qaeda” with “Extremists” in the talking points Susan Rice repeated on the Sunday talk shows.
The intelligence community — not the White House, State Department or Justice Department — was responsible for the substantive changes made to the talking points distributed for government officials who spoke publicly about the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, the spokesman for the director of national intelligence said Monday.
….The initial version included information linking individuals involved in the attack to al Qaeda, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the drafting of the talking points. But when the document was sent to the rest of the intelligence community for review, there was a decision to change “al Qaeda” to “extremists.” The official said the change was made for legitimate intelligence and legal reasons, not for political purposes.
Republicans led by John McCain, have hoped and prayed that someone in the White House – preferably President Obama – changed those words. Their hope was presenting the Obama administration in a negative light, engaging in a cover-up of the unfortunate events that took the lives of four Americans in Benghazi Libya.
Now that this information is cleared up, are the Republicans going to stop their baseless witch-hunt on Susan Rice? Don’t bet on it. After this news broke, 97 Republicans signed a letter urging President Obama to avoid nominating Susan Rice for Secretary of State.
Susan Rice has over 20 years of diplomatic experience. She is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations and has the experience and education necessary to represent America as Secretary of State. Why then, are Republicans hellbent on denying her nomination? Said Marcia Fudge, the next chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus:
“All of the things they have disliked about things that have gone on in the administration, they have never called a male unqualified, not bright, not trustworthy. There is a clear sexism and racism that goes with these comments being made by unfortunately Sen. McCain and others.”
John McCain is doing a fantastic job of playing the role of the grumpy old man. He has embraced this role since losing to President Obama in 2008 and he sees a clear benefit to continuing his role today in 2012. The killing of four Americans in Benghazi has been McCain’s most recent trophy, and he is trying to use this trophy to hit the president and his administration on the head.
Since Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed on September 11th, 2012, Republicans led by presidential loser Mitt Romney have tried to blame President Obama. The blame game began before knowledge of the American deaths were known as Mitt Romney held a press conference while the attacks were happening, calling the uprising in Libya “the downfall of President Obama’s foreign policy.”
The killings happened at an unfortunately ideal moment, as Muslims all over the Middle East responded to a “movie” made by a right-wing nut-job here in America. Egyptians marched in protest to the movie that depicted their leader in many disparaging ways and in Libya, more protests against the movie occurred. People marched to a compound in Benghazi where Ambassador Stevens worked and rocket-propelled grenades exploded in the compound killing the four Americans.
At this moment when the news finally made it back that Americans actually died, Mitt Romney had already wrapped up his press conference blaming President Obama. That was a little over two months ago and since then, Mitt Romney lost the general election. Leave it up to John McCain to carry on Romney’s fight.
So now, John McCain has the administration in his sights and more specifically, the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. Rice could President Obama’s nominee to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, but soon after the events in Benghazi, Rice went on the Sunday television talk shows and repeated the information she knew at that time – that the attack in Benghazi was not an act of terrorists, but the result of the uprising against the movie.
That was the information Susan Rice had before the formal investigation was made, but John McCain thinks there is a bigger story here. Without any proof whatsoever, McCain and the Republicans are continuing to push this issue hoping that somehow, it leads to the doorstep of President Obama. And McCain is willing disapprove any nominee for Secretary of State until the President is impeached for… something.
Doing how own rounds on the Sunday talk shows, McCain was heard saying;
Under the present circumstances, until we find out all the information as to what happened, I don’t think you would want to support any nominee right now. Because this is very very serious and it has even larger implications than the deaths of 4 Americans. It really goes to the heart of this whole light foot print policy that this administration is pursuing.
The American people have spoken in the election, and based on the results of the elections they want a government capable of working together to solve the pressing issues of the day. But given McCain’s present goal to bring down this administration at any cost necessary, including pushing baseless and fact-less stories, it seem that working together for the benefit of the country is not the path McCain wishes to pursue.
Apparently McCain still has some ill feelings towards this president and the need for the country to have an effective Secretary of State will take a back seat to McCain’s own personal feelings.
The story of Benghazi has now been magnified by partisan Republicans to a point of no return, and their to somehow tie the Obama administration to the unfortunate events that took the lives of four Americans, is appalling. With absolutely no facts to back up their claim that the president “intentionally lied” to Americans about the events in Benghazi, Republicans have found themselves in a position where they are grasping at the air for something to hold on to.
Take for example what happened on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on Friday. Cooper invited Republican Dana Rohrabacher to his show and offered the congressman an opportunity to defend his position that President Obama intentionally mislead the American people. Rohrabacher used his time to continue calling the President a liar.
When asked by Anderson to prove where Obama lied, the Republican congressman took a page from the Mitt Romney playbook on lying and he dug in even more, raising his voice in a shouting match with himself, trying to drown out Anderson Cooper’s rebuttal that what he was saying “was factually not correct.”
Mr. Cooper tried telling the Republican that James Clapper‘s office – Director of National Intelligence – were the ones informing the administration of the events in Benghazi, and that whatever the administration told the American people came from the National Intelligence office. Cooper then asked if the National Intelligence Office was also lying. The Republican, feeling cornered by the truth, yelled some more.
Remember when foreign affairs wasn’t a major part of the presidential campaign? It was supposed to be about jobs, jobs and jobs. But now that the world has intruded on our parochial election, the third debate will play a major role in the last two weeks of this contest.
This does not bode well for Mitt Romney, and it plays into one of Obama’s strengths.
Romney has also boxed himself in on Afghanistan. According to this story in the LA Times, his policy is much like the President’s.
In the 16 months that he has been running for president, the thrust of Mitt Romney‘s policy toward Afghanistan has been this: He would hew to President Obama‘s timeline to withdraw U.S. troops by the end of 2014, but he would part ways with the president by giving greater deference to the judgment of military commanders.
Beyond that, Romney has revealed little about what his guiding principles would be for committing U.S. troops in conflicts around the world or what elements have shaped his thinking about Afghanistan — subjects likely to be broached in Monday’s foreign policy debate.
Excuse me for being naïve, but don’t we needa sense of Romney’s worldview? Would he keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan if he already was president? And how much deference would he give to the military commanders? I thought that our Constitution guaranteed civilian control of the military. Ultimately, the president is the Commander-In-Chief. President Obama has made those tough decisions. It looks like Mitt is ready to…defer.
Obama’s foreign policy has been pragmatic, and at times he has angered the left by keeping some of the Bush security laws and not closing Guantanamo Bay. But the killing of Osama bin Laden and treaties with Russia on weapons and Colombia, Panama and South Korea on trade prove that he is a president who has his eyes on the future and a keen sense of how the United States will succeed in a truly global environment. He needs to hammer these points home and expose Mitt Romney as the foreign policy rookie that he is.
The big story now, in the Republican circles at least, seems to be the tragedy that happened in Benghazi Libya on September 11th 2012 when four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens were killed. The Obama administration originally said that the attack on the Embassy was the result of a hateful video against Islam, a video that caused violent uprising in many Islāmic nations.
After an investigation, it was determined that the American Embassy was the target of a terrorist attack. It was also revealed that the Embassy may have requested extra security before the attack happened.
Republicans led by Mitt Romney, saw some political benefit in attacking the Obama administration for not “providing the necessary security” the Embassy requested, and they have harped on this over the last few weeks. But a new report is shedding more light on this claim and the reason more security wasn’t sent to Benghazi.
It seems that Republicans, including the Republican vice president candidate Paul Ryan, voted to cut funding to the very department responsible for paying for extra security. The New York Times reports;
The ugly truth is that the same people who are accusing the administration of not providing sufficient security for the American consulate in Benghazi have voted to cut the State Department budget, which includes financing for diplomatic security. The most self-righteous critics don’t seem to get the hypocrisy, or maybe they do and figure that if they hurl enough doubts and complaints at the administration, they will deflect attention from their own poor judgments on the State Department’s needs.
But as part of the Republican majority that has controlled the House the last two years, Mr. Issa joined in cutting nearly a half-billion dollars from the State Department’s two main security accounts. One covers things like security staffing, including local guards, armored vehicles and security technology; the other, embassy construction and upgrades. In 2011 and 2012, President Obama sought a total of $5 billion, and the House approved $4.5 billion. In 2009, Mr. Issa voted for an amendment that would have cut nearly 300 diplomatic security positions. And the draconian budgets proposed by Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul Ryan, would cut foreign affairs spending by 10 percent in 2013 and even more in 2016.
Moments after our Embassy was attacked in Libya and four Americans died, Mitt Romney was in front the cameras criticizing President Obama for the attacks. And now, in another feeble attempt to appear human, Mitt Romney has told a story about a Navy SEAL he claimed he met. As fate would have it, that SEAL was killed in Benghazi Libya last month. His name was Glen Doherty and he died honorably serving this country.
Mitt saw an opportunity to use Glen’s death as a political ploy and began using his meeting with the SEAL to gain votes. Said Romney, “…he came from Massachusetts, where I’d been governor, had family there. He also had skied in some of the places, snow skiing that I had found during the Winter Olympics in Utah, that I’d skied at. And we had a nice chat together.”
Romney continued;
And you can imagine how shocked I was to learn that he was one of the two Navy — former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi, just a couple of weeks ago. And I read on CNN International that when the report came that our consulate had been attacked, that he and the other SEAL that was killed with him, that they were in a different place, they were about a mile away, an annex somewhere else in the city. And when they heard that the consulate was under attack, they went to the attack.”
Enter Barbara Doherty, Glen’s mom. And like all moms, her paternal instincts kicked in. Realizing what Mitt Romney was doing to the memory of her son, Barbara stepped up and demanded that Romney stopped using her son for his political gain.
“I don’t trust Romney,” Mrs. Doherty told Boston’s WHDH-TV. “He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda. It’s wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama.”
In a rare glimpse of morality, Romney’s campaign announced that they would stop using Glen for their cheap politics.
Ahmadinejad is finally admitting that the steep decline in his country’s currency is due to the sanctions imposed by President Obama and other supporting nations. The Iranian president calls the sanctions “psychological pressures.”
In the past few days Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost more than half its value against the U.S. dollar. It has prompted fears that the economy is on the verge of collapse, crippled by sanctions which means Iran has lost markets where it can export oil. The price of goods has also risen, as many have to be imported.
The U.S. and its allies have imposed the punishing measures in attempts to force Iranian concessions over its nuclear programme, which the West says is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Tehran insists it is for peaceful purposes.
President Obama spoke today at the United Nations and discussed the unfortunate recent events Libya, where a mob attacked and killed four Americans including Chris Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
The attacks on our civilians in Benghazi were attacks on America. We are grateful for the assistance we received from the Libyan government and the Libyan people. And there should be no doubt that we will be relentless in tracking down the killers and bringing them to justice. I also appreciate that in recent days, the leaders of other countries in the region – including Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen – have taken steps to secure our diplomatic facilities, and called for calm. So have religious authorities around the globe.
But the attacks of the last two weeks are not simply an assault on America. They are also an assault on the very ideals upon which the United Nations was founded – the notion that people can resolve their differences peacefully; that diplomacy can take the place of war; and that in an interdependent world, all of us have a stake in working towards greater opportunity and security for our citizens.
A U.S. drone strike killed seven suspected al-Qaida members believed to be heading toward a restive province where Yemeni forces have been intensely battling the terror group,Yemeni officials said.
The unmanned U.S. drone targeted a vehicle in the province of Bayda, south of the capital of Sanaa, killing the seven people inside on the spot, according to two Yemeni military officials.
A statement from the Ministry of Defense said only that a jet fired a missile at a vehicle carrying al-Qaida members, destroying it and the people inside. The statement did not clarify whether the strike was American or Yemeni. The discrepancy could not be immediately clarified.
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