U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice Evan Vucci/AP
Susan Rice's Senate opponents voted for resolution on Benghazi protests
The Republicans who object to her claim that protests in Libya preceded four Americans' deaths approved a Senate measure that used similar wording.
Is voting for something in the Senate a less significant statement of beliefs than saying the same thing on a Sunday talk show?
That's the standard the troika of GOP senators leading the charge against U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice is using today. Their comments come in the wake of revelations that they voted by acclimation to sign a measure in September asserting a similar account of the events in Benghazi on September 11 and 12 as laid out by Rice on the Sunday talk shows the weekend after the attack.
The issue might partly be due to bad wording in Senate Resolution 588, which stated in the process of honoring the four Americans who lost their lives in the attack in Libya that "the violence in Benghazi coincided with an attack on the United States Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, which was also swarmed by an angry mob of protesters on September 11, 2012."
That "also" suggests that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was swarmed by a mob of protestors like the ones who breached the U.S. embassy in Cairo, rather than a mob of armed militants, some of whom had been inspired to action that evening by media coverage of the protests in Cairo, as has since been reported.