CNN’s Fareed Zakaria hasn’t interviewed Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice since she made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows last year falsely blaming the attacks at Benghazi, Libya on a “Youtube video,” and yet, Zakaria couldn’t take a second of his 12-minute interview to ask her anything about the attacks and her false claims in its aftermath.
Zakaria did ask about some very pressing and important issues, of course. Iran and Syria are two of the most vexing issues in foreign policy today. But why no mention of Rice’s biggest failure to date, one where she was caught misleading the American people?
As Noel Sheppard asks, “Was that a pre-condition of the interview, or does Zakaria, like the president he adores, see the murder of four Americans including an ambassador as a ‘phony scandal’?”
Susan Rice didn’t just tell one fib in the days after the attack on our embassy personnel in Benghazi, an attack that killed four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens. She also went around telling the American people that the Middle East protests weren’t terrorism and weren’t directed at the United States.
This, of course, was all proven false as the weeks wore on. But more importantly, it was shown that all these claims were known to be incorrect even as the attacks were happening, yet Obama sent Susan Rice out to the American people to disgorge these false claims anyway.
CNN’s Zakaria had his own problems in 2012, of course. Not long after the attacks in Libya, Zakaria was accused of plagiarism for which he was suspended from both CNN and Time Magazine.