Susan Rice was a little less ubiquitous this time around than during her infamous five-talk-show world tour repeating the lie that the Benghazi terrorist attack was the fault of an inflammatory video and not due to the criminal negligence of President Barack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But there she was again on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Comedy Hour” defending her former boss, this time against charges that President Trump cleaned up more of Obama’s Iran mess by terminating the life and reign of terror of Iranian Gen. and Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani:
The Obama administration wasn’t presented with the opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad early Friday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said Friday night.
“Had we been presented such an opportunity, what we would have done is weigh very carefully and very deliberately the risks versus the potential rewards,” Rice told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow….
Rice questioned whether Trump made the right decision.
“So, if in fact the administration can be believed that there was indeed strong intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States that’s being carried out by Soleimani and related militia then the question becomes [was] there more than one way to address that threat?” she told Maddow. “Was the only way to deal with it to kill Soleimani? Certainly, given his history and track record, he deserves his just rewards but the question is does that serve our interests? Does that make us more secure?”
Uh, yes it does, Susan. The Trump administration is certainly more believable than you and the Obama administration was in explaining why four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi, including Amb. Christopher Stevens. Because Trump killed Soleimani, the American embassy did not turn into another Obama-Clinton-Rice Benghazi tragedy.
The “reward” is that Soleimani can no longer ply his murderous trade and the families of the 600-plus Americans killed by his explosively-formed-penetrators can take some solace in his occupation of a special place in Hell. Those maimed by this butcher can take heart in that not enough pieces of him were found to have an open casket. And what were the risks? That those shouting “Death to America!” might try to kill us?
According to a 2018 report in the Daily Beast, Obama launched 186 drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan during just his first two years in office. If he wanted to, he could have found and killed him. He killed Osama bin Laden, and took credit for it, even though the legwork was done by the preceding Bush administration. Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was president, not because he was president
Obama didn’t want to kill Soleimani. He wanted the nuclear deal sellout with Iran, and killing Iran’s Quds Force commanding general would not have advance the deal. Better for Obama to release $150 billion to the Iranians and fly in some $1.8 billion in cash and drop it on an Iranian tarmac in the middle of the night. Quid pro quo, anyone? Obama not only didn’t pursue Soleimani as a matter of policy, he provided Soleimani and Iran with a terrorist-and-weapons slush fund to...