November 29, 2012 -- Updated 1531 GMT (2331 HKT)
Peter Bergen says there are major flaws in
the GOP argument against the Obama administration's handling of the
Benghazi attack aftermath
November 29, 2012 -- Updated 1531 GMT (2331 HKT)
Rice meetings leave lawmakers uneasy
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Peter Bergen: Susan Rice's trip to Capitol Hill wasn't a success, senators said
- He says the GOP continues to bash Rice for her mistaken explanation for Benghazi attack
- Bergen says the argument that Obama administration deliberately lied doesn't hold up
- The intelligence community decided not to initially reveal truth about attack, he says
Editor's note: Peter
Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and the author of "Manhunt:
The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad."
(CNN) -- Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice,
a possible nominee to be the next secretary of state, came to Capitol
Hill Tuesday to perform a private mea culpa to key Republican senators
for her erroneous initial public statements about the perpetrators of
the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September in which four
Americans were killed.
It didn't work.
After Tuesday's meeting with Rice, Sen. John McCain said,
"It is clear that the information that she gave the American people was
incorrect when she said that it was a spontaneous demonstration
triggered by a hateful video."
Peter Bergen
Sen. Lindsey Graham who also met with Rice observed, "Bottom line: I'm more disturbed now than I was before."
What is the Republican
theory of the case against Rice? It appears to boil down to the idea
that leading Democrats covered up the involvement of terrorists in some
way connected to al Qaeda in the Benghazi attack during the run-up to
the close presidential election because President Obama and others in
his administration had for some time said that al Qaeda was close to
strategic defeat.
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Does this case make
sense? First, you would have to accept that Obama, Rice and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton all knowingly deceived the American public about
what had happened at the Benghazi consulate.
When this notion was raised in October during the second presidential debate, Obama scolded
Republican challenger Mitt Romney saying, "the suggestion that anybody
in my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador --
anybody on my team -- would play politics or mislead when we've lost
four of our own, Governor, is offensive."
According to a CNN poll released
Tuesday most Americans agree with the president and do not believe that
anyone in his administration intentionally tried to mislead them about
what happened in Benghazi.
Susan Rice responds to Benghazi critics
Rep. Heck explains Susan Rice criticism
McCain: Iraq and Libya entirely different
Ayotte: Rice 'certainly' misled on Libya
Second, it was the
intelligence community, not officials at the White House or State
Department, that eliminated from the talking points used by Rice after
the Benghazi attack the suspected involvement of the Libyan jihadist
group, Ansar al-Sharia.
According to accounts of
former CIA director David Petraeus' closed door testimony about
Benghazi to congressional intelligence committees earlier this month,
the intelligence community
eliminated references to Ansar al-Sharia in the talking points so as
not to tip off members of the terrorist group that the CIA believed that
they were responsible for the attack.
The conspiracy therefore was not to mislead the American public but to mislead America's enemies.
If Rice had gone beyond
her unclassified talking points and said that Ansar al-Sharia was
suspected to be behind the Benghazi attacks, no doubt she would now be
being hounded for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
Third, it is worth
recalling that whenever there is a news event in a chaotic country on
the other side of the world, first accounts about the event are often
wrong.
Remember the erroneous
reports about another big news event last year; the death of Osama bin
Laden. Initially, it was portrayed by the Obama administration that bin
Laden had died during a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and had used his wife as a human shield.
As more accurate
information subsequently came in from the field, administration
officials clarified that bin Laden put up no resistance and had not used
his wife as a shield.
This is not conspiracy; this is the fog of war.
It is also worth recalling that the situation in Benghazi was so chaotic and dangerous that it took three weeks for the FBI to get in to the city to investigate what had happened at the consulate.
And it took even more
time for the facts to emerge that the Benghazi mission wasn't really a
consulate in any conventional sense, but was more of a CIA listening
station and that two of the four Americans who had died in the attack weren't diplomats as initially portrayed but were, in fact, CIA contractors.
The fact that
Republicans have pressed to learn more about the security arrangements
at the consulate and security in Benghazi overall as well as the details
of what happened the night of the attack has ended up bringing to light
much useful information.
But none of that information has changed the basic fact that a tragedy occurred at Benghazi, not a cover up.
Stepping back from the
whole debate about how Rice came to make inaccurate public statements
about Benghazi, there is another premise of the Republican attacks upon
her that deserves considerable skepticism.
We are supposed to believe that because Ansar al-Sharia --
a group inspired by al Qaeda's ideas, but having no links to the
terrorist group that attacked the United States on 9/11 -- was able to
pull off a deadly attack in a Middle Eastern country ravaged by a recent
war against a lightly defended U.S. mission, killing four, that al
Qaeda is suddenly an important threat again to the United States.
If you buy that, I have a bridge in Benghazi I'd like to sell you. COPY http://edition.cnn.com/
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