Ironic given the election.

Now they don't get to bring Benghazi up every time there's a foreign relations crisis for the next four years.

I'm sure she volunteered. Rice was deeply invested in the Libyan regime change, so she felt determined to shape the public perceptions of the attack in order to defend the policy. That decision blewback on her.

in her statements. Don't legitimize the Miserable McCain or his stooges. This was revenge for Rice saying, during the 2008 campaign, that McCain's "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" was irresponsible. Petraeus piled on probably because he believed he shouldn't have been asked to resign.... Despicable beings, all of them.

just reminding people that Republicans are what they are, and given a sliver of a chance to obstruct & destroy, they will always jump on it.

Dems always seem to think that we will be given the same benefit of the doubt that we routinely give others.. (Iran-Contra/Issa's Insurance Fraud scams/Bush's Bogus Wars/Keating-5)..

We release the rattlesnakes, and then are somehow surprised when one of them bites us.

the best way to handle rattlesnakes is to decapitate them.

Wile Graham and McCain wielded the knife, there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm for her from Democrats in the National Security establishment. Durbin offered some medium warm support in early December, but that is all that I could find.

Did Secretary Clinton support Rice as her successor?

She would be the logical choice for the "first words"..

I thought the same thing when Condi was tossed out into the glaring headlights in her powder-blue suit after the WTC attacks.. Unprepared, fumbling, and yet she did get a pass...

That's why Hillary is staying away from any and all personal contact. It's plutonium.

It has more to do with the failure to quickly restabilize both Libya and Syria, and the flow of manpads and Jihadis out of Benghazi than the tragic fact that Amb. Stevens was killed by al-Qaeda. There were some high-level (mis)representations made in early 2011 akin to Tenet's "all net" claims about Iraq WMD. The situations in both countries, and indeed in the region, are far worse than any of those pushing regime change predicted, and we're on the verge of a regional Sunni-Shi'ia civil war with all sorts of blowback potential.

No, there's something much bigger going on that the death of four Americans and some misleading statements by Rice five days later. Obama's very hawkish, neocon-influenced foreign policy team has been shown to be very, very wrong about outcomes in a very, very dangerous region.

The GOP don't know what to do with this because they're also supporters of the same "all roads lead to Tehran" regime change operation that's gone very, very bad.

That was the precipitating factor that we chose to ignore.

The only "winners" when we meddle in Civil Wars, are the radicals who are willing to risk it all to take power.

Iran is the big winner in the Iraq war.

Religious/Civil wars are always dangerous and have long-lasting and worldwide consequences.. Remember the Crusades?

The WTC attacks were horrific and had we chosen to accept the world's assistance (it was offered) to search for and punish the group(s) responsible, we would be a lot richer for it...and have a lot of dead-soldiers still living.

The "middle east" as we have known it for a very long time, is an artificial construct (see Balfour), and old dictators always die or eventually lose power. The unraveling is always ugly..

Early on in the Administration, John Kerry became Obama's personal emissary for back-channels diplomacy with Syria and was reportedly making significant progress when suddenly, in January last year, the Syrian opposition in exile declared a rebellion. This happened almost simultaneously in Libya, aned events in the two countries tracked each other closely leading up to the outbreak of armed insurrection and civil war. On March 8, the first of a series of deadly confrontations between the Syrian regime and armed demonstrators broke out in Daraa. Snipers killed 16 policemen and a Sunni mob exiting Friday prayers attacked and burned the Ba'ath Party headquarters in that city. Within a week tanks were in the street, and the rest is history.

These early triggering events involving snipers and armed attacks on government buildings were largely overlooked by al Jazeera and the rest of the Gulf Arab media which were covering events live. Most of the western media got its reports of massacres of unarmed protestors, not what actually happened in Daraa to trigger the civil war, directly from the opposition spokesmen in London and Paris, and broadcast it unfiltered and unconfirmed. Diplomacy ended.

The big winner in Syria and Libya is the most radical Sunni Jihadis sponsored by Saudis who were rewarded with huge amounts of Gulf Arab money along with arms shipments coordinated by the CIA, the British, and the French intelligence agencies to bring down the Syrian regime. It looks like militarily, they may succeed, but the US and its western allies will then have to deal with a much larger better armed Salaafist military movement than the one that emerged from similar covert operations against the Soviets and Serbs in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Serbia. That, by the way, also happened under a Democratic Administration under many of the same leadership and top intelligence officers running this operation. The potential for blowback from the Sunni-Shi'ia wars as the conflict grows and spreads regionally makes 9/11 seem almost insignificant by comparison. If we're really lucky, it may be that some of the smarter people in Washington, including this President, recognize the terrible risks and may be changing course and getting rid of some of the principal regime changers. Maybe.