Susan Rice: No Regrets Over Initial Benghazi Comments
Katrina Trinko /
Former ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said today she does not regret her initial statements on the situation in Benghazi, when she appeared on the Sunday political shows and said the violence in Benghazi was “spontaneous” and caused by an anti-Muslim video.
“What I said to you that morning, and what I did every day since, was to share the best information that we had at the time,” Rice, who is now National Security Advisor, said on NBC’s Meet the Press today.
“That information turned out, in some respects, not to be 100 percent correct,” Rice conceded. “But the notion that somehow I or anybody else in the administration misled the American people is patently false. And I think that that’s been amply demonstrated.”
Heritage’s Helle Dale argued otherwise in an article last month, saying that recently-unclassified testimony contradicted Rice and others. Dale wrote:
There was never any doubt at the Pentagon, we learned this week. The country’s top military commanders clearly understood the assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, was a terrorist attack from the moment the first reports came in, just 15 minutes after the assault began on September 11, 2012.
Over 450 pages of testimony given at nine closed-door hearings in the House Armed Services Committee were unclassified this month. This testimony indicates beyond any doubt that the narrative of the Benghazi tragedy was changed within the White House. The question remains why and by whom.