SUSAN RICE WITHDRAWS, REPUBLICANS GET TOO MUCH CREDIT & BLAME
By William Boardman Email address removed
In discussions about UN Ambassador Susan Rice these days, the elephant in the room is not a Republican, it's a conflict of interest. But you'd hardly know that from most of the media coverage, which is pretty much all Republicans all the time.
Susan Rice, who was never nominated to be Secretary of State, formally withdrew her name from consideration on December 13 in a friendly media appearance on NBC with Brian Williams, who did not question her outside the context of her statement: that she was withdrawing from the nomination she didn't have in order to save the country from an ugly confirmation fight in the Senate.
Republican theatrics was the sole explanation for Rice's withdrawal offered by literally dozens of perfectly competent reporters across the media spectrum, without reference to her financial holdings in the oil industry and increasing criticism of her record with African dictators and a hawkish willingness to take the country to war.
There's little doubt that Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) were ready to lead their colleagues in a continuation of the public pillorying they had been putting Rice through since September, when Rice went on five Sunday morning TV shows to pitch the administration's early version of what happened in Benghazi on September 11, when a terrorist attack coincided with an on-going CIA operation that was then still covert.
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