The Rice Follies

Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the UN, is at the top of the list of potential candidates for replacing Clinton as Secretary of State. The biggest obstacle for
Rice is her performance as the spokesman for the Obama administration on the Sunday after the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans including our ambassador to Libya. Rice went on five news programs that day and basically lied to the
American people. There are some who quibble abut whether or not ‘Rice lied; they say that she merely repeated false statements that she had been given to say but which she did not know to be untrue. It makes no difference.

Here’s the basic point: Rice told America and the world that the attack was not the work of terrorists even though Obama and all of Washington knew that al Qaeda had been in charge of the attack. Rice certainly had access to the intelligence that made the involvement of the terrorists clear. That means that Rice either lied or else that she knowingly decided to close her eyes to the evidence that contradicted what she had been told.

A Secretary of State has to be able to separate the truth from the miasma of rumors and lies that swirls through the diplomatic world. If Rice lied to America she does not deserve to be Secretary of State. On the other hand, if Rice just did not recognize that the story she had been given to tell was false and contradicted by a wealth of evidence, then she does not deserve to be Secretary of State.. In other words, Rice does not deserve to be Secretary of State.