Embattled U.N. ambassador Susan Rice is dropping out of the running to be the next secretary of state after months of criticism over her repeated misrepresentations about events that led to the deaths of the U.S. Ambassador and others in Benghazi.
“Today, I made the decision that it was the best thing for our country, for the American people that I not continue to be considered by the president for nomination of secretary of state,” Rice said.
Rice has been under intense fire for mischaracterizing the 9/11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as a spur-of-the-moment response to an anti-Muslim film. “What happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video,” Rice had said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and a number of other news programs five days after the attack.
“Opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and it escalated into a much more violent episode,” she told the American people in the name of the Administration, while she and other authorities were well award that the opposite was true–that the attacks were carried out by Muslim extremist terrorists.
Ambassador Rice will be grilled by congressional committees attempting to get at the truth of the terrorist attack and subsequent coverup over the next several days.
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