Ambassador Susan Rice didn’t lie when it came to the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, she just put a “softer touch” on the real facts, Republican Senator from Georgia and Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Saxby Chambliss told the Morning Joe panel on Friday morning.
Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., appeared on Sunday morning talk shows five days after the attack on the U.S. consulate and stated the attack seemed to be the result of a spontaneous demonstration.
“…let’s remember what has transpired over the last several days. This is a response to a hateful and offensive video that was widely disseminated throughout the Arab and Muslim world,” Rice told “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory on Sept. 15. “Obviously, our view is that there is absolutely no excuse for violence and that– what has happened is condemnable, but this is a– a spontaneous reaction to a video.”
Rice is now at the center of a controversy surrounding the attack, and several GOP senators, including Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz. and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are now vowing to block President Obama’s nomination should he choose to have Rice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
“She just didn’t get out there and say ‘Look, this is a terrorist attack, somebody screwed up and we got to get to the bottom of it,’” Chambliss continued on Morning Joe. “I think the American people would’ve been better served, and they would’ve had a better feeling about what happened in Benghazi if the White House had just been forthcoming very quickly. They knew, by then, more about what happened than what was being talked about.”
Drew Katchen