Senators Hit Back at Obama Over Rice, Benghazi: ‘You Failed as Commander in Chief’

 Well, these two neo-cons finally got something right

In an escalating war of words over the administration’s handling of the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Wednesday President Obama had “failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack” and reiterated he would not support a cabinet post for “anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle.”

Graham was responding to the president’s robust defense of Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, viewed as a strong prospect for Obama’s second-term secretary of state, who is in Republican senators’ crosshairs over the Benghazi affair.

Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and members Graham and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) want a Senate select committee of the kind that investigated Watergate to probe the attack, which cost the lives of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

During his White House press conference, Obama slammed the senators for challenging Rice, who told a series of Sunday talk shows on September 16 that the attack on the U.S. consulate five days earlier had, according to the best information available at the time, been a “spontaneous reaction” to an obscure online video clip mocking Mohammed (see below for her remarks).

“As I’ve said before, she made an appearance [on television] at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her,” Obama said.
“If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me,” he continued. “And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation, is outrageous.”

Obama also said he had yet to make a decision on a successor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but that if he thought Rice “would be the best person to serve America” in that capacity, he would nominate her.
Shortly after Obama spoke Graham issued a terse statement: “Mr. President, don’t think for one minute I don’t hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi.  I think you failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack.

“We owe it to the American people and the victims of this attack to have full, fair hearings and accountability be assigned where appropriate,” he said. “Given what I know now, I have no intention of promoting anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle.”

McCain also responded to Obama’s remarks.

“I have always said that the buck stops with the President of the United States, particularly for his contradictory statements in the Rose Garden, on ‘60 Minutes’ and in later venues alleging that the obvious terrorist attack in Benghazi was triggered by a spontaneous demonstration and a hateful video, or that we didn’t know the cause,” he said in a statement.

“Those statements clearly did not comport with the facts on the ground. We owe the American people and the families of the murdered Americans a full and complete explanation, which for two months the President has failed to deliver. Given all these facts, a Select Committee must be appointed in order to obtain a full and complete accounting which would be credible with the American people.”

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