Sen. John McCain launched a fierce counterattack on Barack Obama yesterday after Obama arrogantly called McCain’s criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice “outrageous” and said critics of Rice should “go after me.”
McCain, speaking on the Senate floor, went straight for the jugular:
“This president — this administration — has either been guilty of colossal incompetence or been engaged in a coverup, neither of which is acceptable to the American people. I speak as a friend of Christopher Stevens, I speak as a person who knows something about warfare, I speak as something of an authority — that this attack could have been prevented if the information on the ground had been taken into consideration.”
McCain wants a congressional Select Committee to investigate what happened in Benghazi and how the Obama Administration reacted. Paraphrasing Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee during the Watergate investigation, he said bluntly:
There clearly is a need because there is a huge credibility gap among the American people because of the [contradictory statements about the attacks] beginning with the President of the United States. What did the president know? When did he know about it? And what did he do about it?
McCain then reminded Obama that although he is the president, he is not the king:
He really does not have any idea of how serious this issue is. I’m a United States Senator. We have our responsibilities, we have our duties, and we are not picking on anyone here.
And McCain connected the dots by noting that whatever Rice said, her marching orders came from upstairs:
Those talking points did not come from the CIA, they came from the White House. Who at the White House gave her those talking points?
Obama might do well not to cross a man who’s survived more serious issues than a verbal attack.
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