Why the Latest GOP Attack on Susan Rice Is Bogus

Sen. Susan Collins tries to tie Rice to security failures of the 1998 embassy bombings, but official reports undercut this jab.

On Wednesday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) opened up a new front in the GOP war on Susan Rice. After Collins met with Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations who may be President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department, the senator echoed the complaints her colleagues John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte have hurled at Rice regarding her recitation on Sunday talk shows of administration talking points about the September 11 attacks on US facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Collins—who has now essentially endorsed the GOP's oddly targeted crusade against Rice—went further and raised a new (but old) matter, questioning whether Rice was somehow partially responsible for security failures that led to hundreds of casualties in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania when she was assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Yet State Department reports undermine Collins' expanded line of attack.

Up to now, McCain and his crew have concentrated their fire on one aspect of the Benghazi affair: Rice's use of CIA talking points that described the terrorist assault as primarily caused by Muslim outrage over an amateurish anti-Islam film. As the New York Times reports, Rice "accurately recited the talking points the intelligence agencies prepared." And the CIA had purposefully left out information, according to the Times, that "might tip off the malefactors, skew intelligence collection in Libya and interfere with the criminal investigation."

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Talking to reporters after meeting with Rice on Wednesday, Collins, one of the few moderate Republicans remaining in the upper chamber, repeated the McCain line, noting she was "troubled" by Rice's appearances on those Sunday talk shows five days after the Benghazi attacks. She then noted she was also concerned about Rice's actions prior to the 1998 bombings: "What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department. In both cases, the ambassador begged for additional security."

With this remark, Collins was suggesting that Rice had screwed the pooch in 1998. It's a powerful charge, suggesting Rice's supposed inaction may have played a role in the deaths of hundreds. But that's not what a State Department inquiry found.

On August 7, 1998, powerful truck bombs simultaneously exploded at the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. The explosion in Kenya killed 213 people; 44 were embassy employees, including a dozen Americans. Four thousand people were injured by the blast. In Tanzania,12  people, none Americans, were killed, and 85, including many Americans, were injured. Eventually, US intelligence and law enforcement linked Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to the bombings; bin Laden was indicted for his role in the attacks. (Several of the plotters were apprehended, tried in the United States, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole.)

As is standard procedure, after these bombings, the State Department established Accountability Review Boards to investigate each attack. Both were chaired by retired Admiral William Crowe, who had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later a US ambassador to England, and these panels produced classified and unclassified reports on the assaults. (Hillary Clinton has ordered such a review of the Benghazi assault.)

The reports noted numerous security failures and oversights that preceded the bombings. But they don't back up Collins' characterization. Neither mentions Rice, who was a policy person who would not be in charge of embassy or security operations. The report on the Tanzania attack says nothing about the US ambassador there begging for additional security. It notes that "the security systems and security procedures" at the embassy "were in accord with, and in some ways exceeded, Department of State standards for overseas posts assessed as having a 'low' threat rating for political violence and terrorism."

The Kenya report recounts a more complicated tale than that of an ambassador crying for better security and Rice and others at State ignoring the pleas.

In late 1997, according to the report, the US ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, sent a cable to the State Department noting that due to threats of crime, political violence, and terrorism, the embassy, located at the intersection of two of the busiest streets in downtown Nairobi, was vulnerable, particularly because it was not sufficiently set back from the street. She asked for a new chancery. The report notes:

The Department responded to the Ambassador's cable in January, 1998, saying that after a review of the threat, the post's current security rating for political violence and terrorism of 'medium' was appropriate, and that no new office building was contemplated by [the Department's Foreign Building Operations]. The Department offered to send a security assessment team to assist the Embassy in identifying areas where security could be upgraded, and they found ways to reduce the number of embassy personnel, through re-assignments to Pretoria.

There would be no new chancery, but Foggy Bottom, which did send a security assessment team to the Nairobi embassy, responded to Bushnell's concerns in other ways, according to the report:

[T]he Department was prepared to support all the post's requests for upgrades, even beyond the normal standards required for a medium threat post. The embassy senior management, the [regional security officer], and the visiting team did not particularly focus on upgrades in the rear of the embassy [where the bombing occurred] or possible vehicle bomb attacks, but instead concentrated on ways to reduce the danger from crime and political violence. They approved a fence for the parking lot in front of the Embassy, as well as roll down doors for the chancery's front entrance and the rear basement garage door. (The latter door, broken for several months, had been replaced by a temporary two panel swing door which remained open during the day.)

Following the security review team's visit to the embassy, Ambassador Bushnell still pressed for a new embassy building. That matter was the purview of not Susan Rice but someone at a much higher pay grade: Undersecretary of State for Management Bonnie Cohen. According to the report, Cohen told Bushnell that "because of Nairobi's designation as a medium security threat post for political violence and terrorism and the general soundness of the building, its replacement ranked relatively low among the chancery replacement priorities." But Cohen noted the department would be spending $4.1 million to put in more secure windows.

Various security improvements were underway at the Nairobi embassy when the attack happened. But the report states, "As it turned out, they would have made no difference in mitigating the blast, given its size. Nor would they have deterred the terrorists from getting as close to the chancery as they did."

The true security vulnerability at the embassy turned out to be its rear parking lot. That's where the terrorist drove in the explosives-laden truck—and there had been no concerted effort to secure that part of the embassy. The report notes:

Sporadic efforts by the embassy to gain control over the back packing lot…met with limited success…That the embassy did not seek more actively to gain control of the back lot reflected the prevailing view in the embassy and in Washington at that time that the crime threat was far more serious than the terrorist threat. This conclusion was based in part on the judgment of intelligence officials in Washington and in Nairobi that the potential terrorist threats had dissipated by the latter part of 1997 and that no new threat had been uncovered specifically aimed at the embassy. Terrorism was seen as a serious but non-specific potential threat, whereas crime, including muggings and murder in the immediate vicinity of the embassy, was a daily reality that posed a continual threat to every member of the embassy family.

The Nairobi Accountability Review Board report sums up the issue this way:

The Ambassador alerted Washington to the embassy's extreme vulnerability and called for and received assistance in 1998 from the Department of State for a few physical security upgrades beyond those required for a "medium" threat post for political violence and terrorism. In her messages to Washington, the Ambassador also requested that the chancery be relocated. Officials throughout the Department of State rejected this, citing lack of funds and the designation of Nairobi, as a medium threat post, as an unlikely terrorist target…Security systems and procedures at the embassy were implemented well within, and even beyond, the medium threat level established by the Department of State.

Obviously, there were numerous security failings prior to the attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The Kenya review noted that the "most critical [shortcoming] was that no attention was paid to vehicle bomb attacks" in embassy security procedures and systems. Collins was correct to note that the ambassador in Nairobi had asked for additional security. Yet headquarters had indeed responded, though Cohen had not granted Bushnell her request for a new embassy. Even if Foggy Bottom had said yes, no new embassy complex would have been constructed before the bombings.

These reports undercut Collins' insinuation that 14 years before Benghazi Rice was involved in (and bore some responsibility for) related screwups that also resulted in dead Americans overseas. Collins' attempt to tie Rice to the 1998 attacks doesn't bolster the Republicans' thin case against Rice. It does provide more reason to ask, why are they going after her with such a vengeance?

Washington Bureau Chief

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. RSS | TWITTER

Jon Stewart Tears Into John McCain & Lindsay Graham For Hypocritical Outrage Over Susan Rice

Anti-tax man Norquist defiant at "fiscal cliff" edge

By Patrick Temple-West
and Kim Dixon

(Reuters) — Prominent American anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist on Monday insisted that his movement was as strong as ever and that Congress would withstand pressure to raise taxes even if more Republican lawmakers are spurning his anti-tax pledge.

A vast majority of elected Republicans have signed Norquist's "taxpayer protection pledge," launched in 1986, which commits them to voting against tax increases, and it became a sort of litmus test among U.S. conservatives.

But the new House of Representatives, which takes office in January, has 16 Republicans who so far have not signed the pledge, up from six in the outgoing Congress. One new Republican senator, Jeff Flake, also has not signed.

Speaking on the sidelines of a Washington event, Norquist told Reuters: "People don't always take the pledge first when they run. A lot take it after they have been there for a while. The pledge isn't the only vehicle for stopping tax increases."

At the event, sponsored by the nonpartisan Center for the National Interest think tank where Norquist is a board member, he predicted House Republicans would withstand pressure from Democratic President Barack Obama to raise taxes.

Obama won re-election this month on a promise to raise tax rates on the wealthiest households while extending low tax rates for most other taxpayers down the income ladder.

He and Congress are trying to keep the country from falling off the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year when some $500 billion in tax cuts will expire and another $100 billion in automatic budget cuts will kick in.

Democrats gained seats in the both the 100-member Senate and the 435-member House with some Republicans softening their opposition to raising new tax revenue.

Though Republicans were stung by their electoral losses, Norquist said they can force Obama to compromise on tax increases and spending cuts by using the debt ceiling as leverage.

"The debt limit is an additional tool to explain to Obama that he is not the king," Norquist said. "He has to go to Congress for resources."

The U.S. Treasury Department has said it will have enough funds to avoid the ceiling until near the end of the year, and experts say they can use accounting maneuvers to delay the limit beyond that.

Some Republicans have assailed Norquist for his intransigence on tax increases. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission, last week lambasted Republican supporters of the anti-tax pledge.

"What can Grover (Norquist) do to you? He can't murder you. He can't burn your house," Simpson said at an event hosted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an anti-budget deficit group.

(Editing by Howard Goller and Cynthia Osterman)

Warren Buffett calls for a minimum tax on the wealthy

Reuters) — Warren Buffett, the legendary investor who changed the debate about U.S. tax reform in 2011 with a call for the rich to pay more, is now calling for minimum tax rates for millionaires.


In a New York Times editorial printed on Monday, Buffett suggested Congress move immediately to implement minimum taxes of 30 percent on incomes of $1 million to $10 million and 35 percent above that.

"A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultra rich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours," Buffett wrote.

"Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy," he added.

The new push is in keeping with the one he made in the same newspaper in August 2011, in which he decried the "coddling" of the super-rich. He used himself and his secretary as an example, noting that her tax rate was much higher than his even though her income was just a tiny fraction of what he made.

"Warren Buffett's secretary" became a political meme following that editorial, and the said secretary, Debbie Bosanek, was ultimately a guest of President Barack Obama at this year's State of the Union address.

The 2011 editorial spurred Obama to seek the implementation of what he called the "Buffett Rule," which set a 30 percent tax rate on millionaires. Opponents said it would stifle spending by the job-creating well-to-do, a notion Buffett ridiculed in the new editorial.

"So let's forget about the rich and ultra rich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if — gasp — capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased," he said. "The ultra rich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities."

Buffett, whom Forbes ranks as the world's third-richest person, is the chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the ice-cream-to-insurance conglomerate that employs more than a quarter-million people around the world.

He acknowledged in Monday's editorial that some people like him might stop investing as they wait for Congress to act.

"In the meantime, maybe you'll run into someone with a terrific investment idea, who won't go forward with it because of the tax he would owe when it succeeds," Buffett said. "Send him my way. Let me unburden him."

(Reporting by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

McCain loses his way in the fog of politics

The following editorial appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday:

Some Republicans aren’t giving up on the claim Mitt Romney floated in the second presidential debate: that the Obama administration, for political reasons, downplayed the possibility that the deadly attack on a U.S. facility in Libya in September was a well-planned terrorist operation.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has suggested that Susan Rice, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, is “not qualified” to serve as secretary of state because, in television interviews five days after the attack, she said that “the best assessment we have today” is that the attack in Benghazi began as a spontaneous response to earlier protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo related to the video “Innocence of Muslims.”

If the fog of war obscured what actually happened at Benghazi on Sept. 11 – even now, investigators are trying to reconstruct the events that led to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans – then the fog of politics continues to distort the picture of how and why the administration characterized the events the way it did. Most of the obfuscation has come from Republicans.

It’s now clear that Rice’s comments in several TV interviews on Sept. 16 faithfully tracked “talking points” that were assembled by intelligence officials and only slightly edited by the White House and State Department. (A reference to the Benghazi site changed from “consulate” to “diplomatic facility,” hardly evidence of a political cover-up.) The talking points said that there were indications that “extremists participated in the violent demonstration,” which “evolved into a direct assault.” But they didn’t indicate that officials had begun to suspect that groups affiliated with or modeled on al-Qaida were involved.

Should the talking points have included that information? Perhaps, but in her appearance on “Face the Nation,” Rice did say that “it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al-Qaida affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al-Qaida itself, I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.”

Both Rice’s comments and the talking points on which they were based apparently erred in portraying the attack in Benghazi as a spontaneous reaction to the protests in Cairo. But the charge that she knowingly misled her interviewers or the country is, as President Obama rightly said at his news conference last week, outrageous and utterly unsupported by any evidence.

On Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” McCain suggested that Rice might return to his good graces “by publicly coming back on this show and saying, ‘I was wrong, I gave the wrong information on your show some several weeks ago.’ That might be a beginning.” No, the beginning would be for the senator to apologize to the ambassador.

MCT Information Services

Florida Congressman Allen West concedes defeat

Republican Representative Allen West, a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, conceded defeat on Tuesday after two weeks of challenges and partial recounts that only widened his Florida congressional opponent's victory in the November 6 election.


West, a former Army lieutenant colonel who quickly became a controversial figure in his two years in Congress, acknowledged that Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy had won the election after the recounts he requested widened his margin of defeat.

"While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election," said the outspoken West, who had sought re-election to a second term in Congress.

West said he still had doubts about the accuracy of the election results in Florida's 18th Congressional district but that "our legal team does not believe there are enough over-counted, undercounted or fraudulent votes to change the outcome of the election."

West, 51, congratulated Murphy, a certified public accountant who had claimed victory on election night and again on Sunday after the deadline passed in a partial recount in the southeast Florida district.

Murphy, 29, a political newcomer who ran a surprisingly well-funded campaign that branded West as a divisive right-wing extremist, issued a statement on Tuesday saying, "I appreciate Congressman West's gracious concession today.

"I am truly humbled that the voters of the 18th district have entrusted me to represent them in Washington."
West's acrimonious comments about his political opponents served to rally Democratic support for Murphy.

West, one of two black Republicans in the House of Representatives, had called President Barack Obama a "low-level Socialist agitator" and called Obama supporters "a threat to the gene pool." He said as many as 81 House Democrats were members of the Communist Party, although he never identified them.

West spent 22 years in the Army and was a battalion commander during the Iraq war. He was relieved of his command in 2003 and fined $5,000 after firing a gun near an Iraqi man's head during an interrogation.

Initial election results showed Murphy leading West by 1,900 votes. West challenged the results and was granted a recount of early ballots cast in St. Lucie County but it was not completed before a Sunday midday deadline to turn over results to the state Division of Elections. County officials went ahead and finished the recount, which expanded Murphy's lead to 2,100 votes.

West had vowed on Sunday to keep challenging the election, but accepted his defeat on Tuesday.
"Serving the people in the House of Representatives has been among the highest honors of my life, but this seat does not belong to me, or for that matter, to any individual. It belongs to the people," West said.

West had amassed one of the largest campaign war chests among House Republicans, thanks to his support from the conservative Tea Party movement. His donors include Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political advocacy group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

(Reporting by Jane Sutton; Editing by Bill Trott)

Obama, in Asia, says Myanmar trip to encourage democracy

By Matt Spetalnick
and Jeff Mason

BANGKOK, Nov. 18, 2012 (Reuters) — U.S. President Barack Obama denied on Sunday his upcoming trip to Myanmar was an endorsement of the government there, calling it an acknowledgement of the progress made in shaking off decades of military rule and encouragement for it go further.


On Monday, Obama will become the first serving U.S. president to visit Myanmar, also called Burma, part of a three-country Asian tour that, as his first post-election trek abroad, will show he is serious about shifting the U.S. strategic focus eastwards.

Immigrants, minority groups skeptical about Republican outreach

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

(Reuters) — Latinos, African-Americans and other minorities who helped President Barack Obama win a second term are skeptical about enhanced Republican outreach to their communities, but also say the future of the coalition that shaped the 2012 election may be fragile.


Top Republicans rushed to do damage control last week after Mitt Romney blamed his election loss on what he called an Obama strategy of giving "gifts" to blacks, Latinos and young voters - groups instrumental to the president's re-election victory.

President Obama departs for Asia

President Obama departs for Asia, to make historic stop in Myanmar

 (Reuters) — U.S. President Barack Obama departed on Saturday for a three-country swing through Asia, using his first foreign trip since winning re-election to emphasize his administration's focus on the region.

President Obama will make stops in Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia. The highlight of the trip is likely to be the historic stop in Myanmar, a former pariah state. The White House hopes his visit will push the country to lock in democratic reforms.

The president's tour may be overshadowed, however, by violence in the Middle East and concerns about tax and spending talks with lawmakers back home.

President Obama is scheduled to return to Washington early Wednesday morning.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Bill Trott)

The Selling of a President

There are many things online businesses can learn from the recent American Presidential election and you don’t have to be an American to appreciate their significance. Presidential elections are exercises in marketing big ideas, and big ideas are the key to marketing success. After all is said and done, the 2012 US Presidential election boiled down to, is there a place in government for governing? Put that way it really doesn’t seem to make sense, but that was the big idea voters were asked to decide: should government be run by politicians looking out for ‘the people’ or should it be run by business executives looking out for the ‘bottom line?’

By the way, stay tuned to our upcoming posts because in the not too distant future we will have a lot more to say about big ideas and you will be made privy to a host of marketing concepts that you can use to blow the competition away, that is, if you have the nerve and patience, but more on that at a later time.

A Half-Truth Isn’t True No Matter How Many Times You Say It

In politics as in business repeating a lie numerous times doesn’t make it true, and the most dangerous lies are the ones that have some vague tantalizing relation to the truth, but in the end they are obfuscations; self-serving prevarications designed to play upon people’s naivety, ignorance, and insecurity.

The information age aided by the Internet has regurgitated a data-dump of gargantuan proportion into our laps, some of it relevant, some of it nonsense, and some of it contrived. It’s a problem the Intelligence community has always had to deal with; there is just so much data to sift through that the task becomes impossible to distinguish the significant from the irrelevant. There is just too much information to deal with, so people fall prey to charlatans selling each new magic cure-all. Politics, business, and life in general are far too complicated to be parsed into a superficial 140-character tweet or a 20-second out-of-context video clip, but a big idea can stand alone as a sign post of where you’re headed.

Belief and Action Are Often at Odds

Back in the 1950s Ford’s marketing department asked people what they wanted in a car and Ford gave it to them, the Edsel. Sure you could argue about various details and tactics, but in the end the big idea was people knew what they wanted, so Ford gave it to them, and we all know how that worked out. So having a big idea is not enough if the big idea is based on a faulty premise. What people say they want and what they really want are often very different.

When it comes to government, people want it to help them despite what they may say to the pollsters or even to themselves. Ask people if government should be smaller, spend less money, and lower taxes, and they’ll answer, ‘right-on brother, you bet.’ But ask them if they are willing to eliminate all the services and benefits they receive that are funded by taxes and delivered by government agencies, and they’ll scream like stuffed pigs.

You can poll the man-on-the-street about government spending from now until the next election and get the same “I hate government” answers, but people understand no amount of Noblesse Oblige can substitute for responsible government. Perhaps the lesson was finally learned by the good folks of New Jersey, and even their staunch Republican Governor, who collectively realized that, ‘Yes Virginia, it’s good to have government there when you need it.’

During the election more quasi statistics and pseudo facts were tossed around than the loose change Koch and Adelson spent to back a loser. We’re not saying all analytics and measuring methods are bogus. In fact the legitimate number nerds, like Nate Silver, who analyze these things without bias and predisposition, knew before the election that the numbers showed the election would most likely not be as close as the news media wanted you to think; and it would be an uphill battle for Romney to win the Presidency.

But no amount of number crunching, even from the likes of Nate Silver, is going to tell you what the next breakout mobile app, must-have service, or digital doohickey that shakes the shekels from the pockets of Joe Consumer will be. Much of what passes for statistical analysis has been corrupted, distorted, and abused by a cast of spin-doctors and pundits intent on selling their bag of cow pies to an audience that doesn’t understand what they are hearing or how to translate the jibber jabber into meaningful information.

Like many voters, Internet entrepreneurs are bombarded by an onslaught of irrelevance and misinformation. Many voters vote against their own best interests because they don’t understand how to interpret code language and instead rely on a media that is either corrupted by bias, or determined to make everything the same, as if fact and fiction were equal. As disturbing is the trend of the news media to instantly report glib 140-character tweets from know-nothing nincompoops as if they were meaningful analysis.

So too, many Internet entrepreneurs act in a manner contrary to their own best interests by falling victim to slickly presented numerical mumbo jumbo causing them to jump on the bandwagon of every new media hyped wunderkind or splashy online must-have marketing gimmick. If you fail to grasp the difference between customer loyalty and the FB ‘likes’ and twit ‘friends’ you amass, then you’re on the fast track to nowhere.

In The End

Romney’s big idea was running a government is like running a business, and in the end, the majority of American people didn’t buy it. Romney based his bona fides on his business experience, in and of itself an arguable notion backed by anyone who has ever had to deal with venture capitalists, the vultures of the business world. But even if you accept his credentials as a business expert, running a country is not like running a business.

More importantly, the strategies and tactics he employed alienated large segments of the electorate, and unlike business where you can choose the niche markets you want to serve, leaders of democratic countries must serve everyone. To quote, television producer Gary Marshall, “it’s okay to be out there, as long as someone else is out there with you,” and in the case of Romney, he was just too far out.

It really doesn’t matter which side of the political fence you sit on, what matters is, does your audience buy into what you’re selling, and for the Republicans, the answer was no. And the reason their big idea didn’t fly was that it failed to take into account the contradictory nature of fundamental human behavior: big ideas that work must be based on connecting to the basic human needs that determine behavior; and these innate action-driving forces are not always the ones people are prepared to share in a public forum.

---

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, an Internet media production, website design, and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visithttp://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Obama rebukes Republicans over Benghazi, backs UN Ambassador Rice

By Tabassum Zakaria

(Reuters) — President Barack Obama told Republican senators on Wednesday that if they had a problem with the handling of the Benghazi attack in Libya, to "go after me" rather than pick on his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.

Obama's comments, in a combative tone, came after two senior Republican senators said they would block any attempts by the president to put Rice into a Cabinet position that would require Senate confirmation.

Republicans have criticized Rice for going on a round of Sunday talk shows five days after the September 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi and saying that preliminary information suggested it was the result of protests over an anti-Muslim film rather than a premeditated strike.

The White House has said repeatedly the comments were based on the best information Rice had at the time. But Republicans have used her early assessment as a cudgel for criticizing the administration as not being forthcoming about Benghazi, and the senators' remarks on Wednesday suggested they would pursue the issue even though the U.S. presidential election is over.

"But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous," Obama said.

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in the attack that has raised questions about the security of the diplomatic mission, U.S. intelligence about the threat, and the adequacy of the immediate U.S. response.

The issue has become a sensitive one for the administration after Obama's re-election last week as he shapes his Cabinet for a second term. Rice is considered a possible contender to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who does not intend to stay, or for another top post.

"We will do whatever's necessary to block the nomination that's within our power as far as Susan Rice is concerned," said Republican Senator John McCain, who was joined by fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

At his first news conference since being re-elected, Obama retorted: "If Senator McCain and Senator Graham, and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them."

Obama said he had not made decisions on his second-term Cabinet yet, but if he decided that Rice would be the best person to lead the State Department, "then I will nominate her."

Asked why, if Rice had nothing to do with Benghazi she was sent on the talk shows to give the administration's point of view, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor told Reuters: "It made sense to have Ambassador Rice, one of our most senior diplomats, speak about the critical work our diplomats do every day. Ambassador Rice was also uniquely qualified to speak about the broader unrest in the region at the time."

PETRAEUS GOING TO HILL

The Senate and House intelligence committees have scheduled separate closed-door hearings on Thursday about Benghazi. Former CIA Director David Petraeus had initially been scheduled to testify, but after Petraeus' resignation last week over an extramarital affair, acting CIA Director Michael Morell will take his place.

Some senior lawmakers said they still wanted to hear from Petraeus about Benghazi because he had been CIA director at the time of the attack.

The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday night that Petraeus would testify behind closed doors on Friday morning about Benghazi.

The administration's response to Benghazi became a key issue in the last months of the presidential campaign and Obama said at the news conference that "it is important for us to find out exactly what happened" and pledged to cooperate with Congress.

"And we've got to get to the bottom of it and there needs to be accountability. We've got to bring those who carried it out to justice. They won't get any debate from me on that," he said.

McCain and Graham called for the creation of a Senate special committee to investigate the Benghazi attack, rather than have three separate committees with jurisdiction hold hearings: intelligence, armed services and foreign relations.

"Why did senior administration officials seek to blame the spontaneous demonstration for the attack in Benghazi when it was later acknowledged that no protests even occurred in Benghazi and that the (CIA) station chief in Tripoli was apparently reporting back in the first 24 hours that it was a terrorist attack?" McCain said.

But there appeared to be little support among Democrats who control the Senate - or even among some Republicans - for creating a special committee to investigate the Benghazi events.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who like McCain is a Republican, said at this point he did not favor creating a special committee to investigate the events in Benghazi.

When asked if he would support the idea, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said bluntly, "No."

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick, David Lawder and Paul Eckert. Editing by Warren Strobel, Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)

Relaxed yet feisty, Obama lays out second-term agenda

By Jeff Mason
and Mark Felsenthal

(Reuters) — President Barack Obama laid out his second-term agenda on Wednesday, expressing a willingness to work with Republicans in Congress and a resolve to defy them if necessary.


In his first full-scale news conference since March, Obama said he was willing to compromise with Republicans to forge a deal on the nation's debt and taxes to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a combination of budget cuts and tax increases that will kick in next year if such an agreement is not reached.

But he said he would not abandon his campaign pledge to allow Bush-era tax cuts on the top 2 percent of U.S. earners to expire.

He also launched a feisty defense of his United Nations ambassador, Susan Rice, pushing back against two Republican senators who said they would not support her nomination for a Cabinet post because she made misleading statements about the September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans.

"If Senator (John) McCain and Senator (Lindsey) Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," Obama said.

After a re-election campaign that critics said offered few details of his vision for the next four years, Obama discussed his priorities on policies from immigration to climate change during an hour-long press conference, his first since defeating former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on November 6.

"I hear you have some questions for me," Obama told reporters at the White House before launching into familiar positions on raising taxes for wealthy Americans and protecting the middle class.
The president was relaxed, bantered with reporters who challenged him and expressed gratitude for having the chance to be in the White House for another four years.

"I don't have another election. And Michelle and I were talking last night about what an incredible honor and privilege it is to be put in this position," he said, referring to his wife as he noted that millions of people who voted for and against him are counting on his leadership going forward.

"I take that responsibility very seriously," he said. "And I hope and intend to be an even better president in the second term than I was in the first."

CONCILIATORY TONE

Critics of his first term say Obama did not do enough to reach out to lawmakers, particularly Republicans who still hold a majority in the House of Representatives. Obama took a conciliatory tone toward Congress while sticking to his positions on issues that divide Democrats and Republicans, including tax rates and reducing the budget deficit.

"Look, I think there's no doubt that I can always do better, and so I will examine ways that I can make sure to communicate my desire to work with everybody, so long as it's advancing the cause of strengthening our middle class and improving our economy," he said.

His conciliatory tone broke down when a questioner asked about McCain and Graham's criticism of Rice, a contender to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

"For them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous," Obama said.

If he decided Rice was the best person to succeed Clinton at the State Department, he would nominate her, Obama said, adding: "That's not a determination that I've made yet."

The controversy over former CIA director David Petraeus' extramarital affair and subsequent resignation dominated the initial questions for the president, who said the former four-star general had an "extraordinary career" and served the United States with distinction.

On fiscal matters, Obama did not go so far as to claim a strong mandate to push through everything he wanted.
"I've got a mandate to help middle-class families and families that are working hard to try to get into the middle class," Obama said. "That's my mandate. That's what the American people said.

"I don't presume that because I won an election that everybody suddenly agrees with me on everything," he said. "I'm more than familiar with all the literature about presidential overreach in second terms. We are very cautious about that."

Obama was not cautious about putting timetables on the policy priorities he has set for his second term, however.

He said he expects to introduce a bill in Congress on comprehensive immigration reform "very soon" after his January inauguration, and he promised to engage scientists, engineers and elected officials in a conversation about reducing carbon emissions in the coming weeks and months.

(Editing by David Lindsey)

Obama to face tough questions on "fiscal cliff," Petraeus

(Reuters) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday is expected to be grilled about negotiations to avert a looming "fiscal cliff" and the scandal that brought down CIA director David Petraeus when he holds his first news conference since winning a second term.

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers Veterans Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, November 11, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Obama will have little time to savor his decisive November 6 victory over Republican Mitt Romney as he takes questions from the White House press corps for the first time in months in an encounter in the ornate East Room, starting at 1:30 p.m. EST.

The White House had hoped to use the news conference to mobilize public support for Obama's economic agenda in the face of a showdown with congressional Republicans over an economy-shaking package of tax increases and deep spending cuts set to kick in at year-end unless a deal is reached.

But instead a heavy focus will be on Obama's first words on a scandal over an extramarital affair that cost Petraeus his job and has expanded to include the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, who is being investigated for "flirtatious" emails with a woman at the center of the case.

The scandal, which erupted late last week, complicates Obama's efforts to reorganize his national security team following his re-election.

Obama also is likely to face tough questions about where he sees grounds for compromise with Republicans on taxes and spending, how he plans to remake his Cabinet and where he is heading with his second-term foreign policy agenda, including Syria, Iran, China and the war in Afghanistan.

(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Bill Trott)

Congress comes back Tuesday to confront "fiscal cliff"

By Rachelle Younglai
and Jason Lange

(Reuters) — Amid a global fright over Washington's political brinkmanship, U.S. lawmakers return to the capital on Tuesday with a seven-week deadline to reach agreement on scheduled tax hikes and budget cuts that threaten to trigger another recession.


The post-election battle over the so-called fiscal cliff is shaping up as an extension of the political campaign with Democrats trying to rally support for raising taxes on the wealthy as part of any deal, and Republicans countering that such an approach would devastate "job creators" across the country.

President Barack Obama has scheduled high-profile White House meetings with business, civic and labor leaders in advance of a summit set for Friday of top Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Republican leaders, among them former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, have planned their own round of television appearances and news conferences to make their case.

Both sides generally agree on the need to avoid the jolt of $600 billion in draconian deficit-reduction measures they all agreed to in August 2011. They also agree on a need for long-term deficit reduction and revisions of the tax code.

They are at odds, as they were during the election campaign, over how to get over the immediate crisis, with the main disagreement focusing on whether to extend tax cuts for everyone, as Republicans want, or just for those earning below $250,000, as the president wants.

The president and congressional Republicans have sounded conciliatory notes since the election on reaching a deal. But it was clear on Monday that the two sides were still far apart, setting up prolonged debate that could keep investors on edge for the rest of the year.

Obama won re-election last week but Congress remains divided, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans running the House of Representatives.

ECONOMISTS CALL FOR COMPROMISE

In a commentary that raised eyebrows in Washington, economist Glenn Hubbard, who was the chief economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, urged Republicans to accept an increase in average tax rates, though not in marginal tax rates as advocated by President Obama, as part of a long-term deficit solution.

Tuesday, a group of 350 economists, organized by a largely liberal group called "Campaign for America's Future," will issue a statement urging both sides to cease their "obsessive concern with cutting deficits" amid a "fragile" economic recovery.

The widespread sentiment of market analysts was reflected in a memo by PNC strategists noting that while the elections "brought some clarity" to the cliff situation, "significant uncertainty remains in the outlook regarding timing and composition of a fiscal cliff deal.

"The longer it takes the president and Congress to negotiate a deal, the higher the odds that the U.S. fiscal situation will unhinge the progress made during the past three years of economic recovery."

The president's staff released a list of business leaders expected Wednesday at the White House, following Tuesday's event with labor leaders, including AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.

General Electric Co CEO Jeff Immelt will attend, as well as American Express Co Chairman and CEO Kenneth Chenault.

Both are involved in an ad hoc lobby group called "Fix the Debt," which is launching an advertising campaign this week on behalf of balanced, long-term deficit reduction.

The CEOs of 17 big U.S. companies involved with "Fix the Debt" have written lawmakers urging speedy resolution of the fiscal cliff. Their letter will be delivered on Tuesday, when Congress reconvenes.
INTENSE LOBBYING
The city is awash in petitions, letters of concern, editorial recommendations and expensive lobbying efforts, particularly by the defense and healthcare industries, which stand to lose billions of dollars.

Universities and research institutions have also organized to fight the cuts, fearing a massive loss of federal funding of research, particularly in the biological sciences.

The nation's mayors, who see great risks to the many federal aid programs for the cities, have also organized against the cuts.

While the budget cuts and tax hikes are not formally linked, they have become intertwined politically because of timing: both take effect at the beginning of 2013.

Republican leaders have conceded they could support higher taxes, but that the extra revenues should come from getting rid of tax loopholes - not by increasing anyone's tax rates.

"We think you can get that through growth and we think you can get that through reforming the tax code," Representative Peter Roskam, a senior House Republican, told Fox News.

Democrats also looked unwilling to budge, sticking to their demand for higher rates for the rich.
"Unless you're willing to deal with rates ... you don't really touch the very wealthiest Americans," Representative John Yarmuth, a Democrat from Kentucky, told MSNBC.

A senior House Republican aide said he doesn't expect any significant movement on the cliff until after Obama's meeting on Friday with congressional leaders, if then.

"The meeting with the president should get the ball rolling in a serious way," the aide said.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro in Washington; Editing by Fred Barbash and Lisa Shumaker)

Hit political blogger Nate Silver on future of predictive modeling

By David K. Randall

NEW YORK, Nov. 9, 2012 (Reuters) — Nate Silver is an oxymoron come to life: the famous statistician.

After successfully calling the Electoral College results in all 50 states ahead of the U.S. presidential election, Silver, the man behind the popular FiveThirtyEight blog, has quickly become a symbol of the new power of data in politics.

Television pundits across the political spectrum praised his accuracy on the night of the election. His book, "The Signal and the Noise," about the science of prediction, shot up to number two on Amazon.com.

Silver spoke with Reuters Thursday evening. Here is an edited and condensed version of the conversation.

Q: Some of the more established polls this year had some of the worst results. Why do you think that was?

A: I think pollsters have to get back to the basics here. Do you have a poll that is actually calling everyone? Some of the polls that didn't include cellphones had bad years and that's what you would expect. If you aren't taking a representative sample, you won't get a representative snapshot. Polls on the Internet, like Ipsos, and those like it did pretty well. We are living our lives more online and you need to have different ways to capture that. (Ipsos is the polling partner of Reuters. A report by Fordham University ranked Ipsos/Reuters first of 28 polling organizations in accuracy of final, national pre-election estimates.)

Q: Before the election, you were criticized by some politicians and pundits who said the race was much closer than what your model suggested. Where was the discrepancy?

A: It helps to have a set of rules that you set up. You have to look at the data in a consistent way and an unbiased way and not be fooled by the noise associated with polling. So many people were distracted by the fact that you had polling firms that had outliers, whether from error or poor methodology. The outlier polls got the headlines, whereas the consensus was clear that Obama had a lead in the swing states.

Q: How did you get interested in forecasting?

A: A lot of it was baseball. It was hoping to win my fantasy league that drew me to sabermetrics (which applies statistical analysis to predict the performance of athletes). I was drafting Bobby Bonilla and Robin Ventura, these players who had big, brand names that weren't that good anymore. I then started to apply this stuff to analyze real world problems.

Q: What are the limitations of predictive modeling? Where doesn't it work?

A: A lot of things can't be modeled very well. In the book, I look at how difficult it is for economists to forecast jobs and growth. The techniques used are either algorithms or you spitball it (guess at the answer). Neither works all that well. Some of that is acknowledging that the economy is an incredibly complex organization. It's hard to predict 3 million people interacting with each other. Politics are an empirically answerable question. The polls in general elections are pretty reliable, and you can trust them 90 percent of the time. That's not as true in primary elections because it's a different turnout.

Q: Politicians take their own polls, of course, and have their own ways of analyzing data. Did you talk with either the Obama or Romney campaigns about how they were doing it?

A: Only a little bit. I think there are a lot of great reporters who have good conversations with the campaigns, and I had conversations with the campaigns, too. I trust the public information more.

Q: How will polling change before the 2016 election?

A: Polls did pretty well on the whole, but in four years you will see more Internet-based polling. That's really a success story this year, and those firms did quite well for themselves. The Google poll was almost perfect, much better than the Gallup poll. We're living in a world where Google beats Gallup.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Philip Barbara)

Obama win shows demographic shifts working against Republicans

By Susan Heavey 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2012 (Reuters) — Tuesday's decisive win by Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential election highlighted how population shifts - ethnic and generational - have buoyed Democrats while forcing Republicans to rethink their message.

U.S. President Barack Obama smiles while celebrating his re-election during his election night rally in Chicago, Illinois November 7, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

Without recasting their core message and actively trying to expand their base beyond older mostly white Americans, conservatives could struggle even more in future elections as the nation's population incorporates more Latinos, Asians and other minorities as well as young voters, analysts said.

First-time voters, including many young people and immigrants, favored the president by large margins, while older voters leaned to Republican Mitt Romney, Reuters/Ipsos Election Day polling showed.

Obama won an estimated 66 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to Reuters/Ipsos election day polling, at a time when the Latino population is growing rapidly in states such as Florida, one of eight or so politically divided states that were crucial in the presidential race. Other estimates put Obama's share of the Hispanic vote above 70 percent.

"The nonwhite vote has been growing - tick, tick, tick - slowly, steadily. Every four-year cycle the electorate gets a little bit more diverse. And it's going to continue," said Paul Taylor of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

"This is a very powerful demographic that's changing our politics and our destiny," Taylor said, adding that the number of white voters is expected to continue to decline a few points in each future election cycle.

Data has shown for years that the United States is poised to become a "majority minority" nation - with whites a minority of the country - over the next several decades. But Tuesday's results highlighted the political impact.(See http://link.reuters.com/hyd83t for a graphic.)

About 80 percent of blacks, Latinos and other nonwhite voters cast their ballots for Obama on Tuesday compared with less than 17 percent for Romney, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Obama also won about 63 percent of total voters age 18 to 34.
Overall, Romney won nearly 57 percent of the white vote compared with 41 percent for Obama, the polling data showed. The vast majority of votes cast for Romney came from white voters.

Demographer William Frey said that division is troubling.

The United States has long history of racial divide stemming from its roots in slavery and including the civil rights battles of the 1960s.

"We still are a country that's kind of divided, and a lot of that fissure in the population tends to be based in race and age and ethnicity," said Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. "There's kind of a dangerous result in this election when we see older whites moving in one direction and younger minorities moving in another direction."

Frey said he sees the gap less as racism and more as a cultural generation gap.
"It's a little bit of a warning sign that we need to pay attention to," he said.

A GROWING PRESENCE FOR MINORITIES

U.S. data released earlier this year showed the number of ethnic minority births topping 50 percent of the nation's total births for the first time..

It will be years before those newest Americans will be old enough to vote, but the demographic shift is clear. Most analysts project whites to be the racial U.S. minority sometime between 2040 and 2050.

Latinos, the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, are a huge factor.
More than 70 percent voted for Obama compared with about 28 percent for Romney, according to Reuters/Ipsos data.

"We are a much more diverse country than we were" just a generation or two ago, said Pew's Taylor, who also oversees the center's Social and Demographic Trends project and the Pew Hispanic Center. The rising number of multiracial children are also likely to become more of a factor, he added.

Obama, whose historic win in 2008 made him the first ethnic minority U.S. president, had a black father and a white mother.

Aging baby boomers also are a key factor in the demographic transition, as older voters "leave the electorate," as Taylor delicately put it, and young voters more accepting of diversity and an active government are added to the rolls.

That could help drive certain civil rights ballot initiatives, like votes in Maryland and Maine on Tuesday to approve same-sex marriage. In each instance, support from younger voters helped put the measures over the top.

"It was an election in which the future won over the past," said Marshall Ganz, a Harvard University lecturer on public policy, said of Tuesday's various contests.
'A RECIPE FOR EXTINCTION'?

Tuesday's outcome poses big questions for Republicans as they seek new national leaders and prepare for the next congressional election in 2014 and beyond.

Conservatives' stance against immigration reform and gay marriage is "a recipe for extinction," said analyst Mike Murphy, a one-time adviser to prominent Republicans including Arizona Senator John McCain, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor.

"The question is whether or not we're going to have an adult conversation inside the party about our need to attract more people than grumpy old white guys," Murphy told MSNBC. "Demographically, our time is running out."

Ted Cruz, a Latino Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas, said on CBS that his party had to recruit candidates who connect with that community in a "real and genuine way."

Not all Republicans were willing to concede to demographics. Some highlighted tactical and strategic issues in their lost bid for the White House and their failed efforts to take control of the U.S. Senate.

And analysts said Democrats, too, have lessons to learn.

"It is a very powerful wake-up call to both political parties," said Pew's Taylor.
Brookings' Frey said Democrats still must keep the white vote in mind for at least the next couple of election cycles.

"Whites are not dead," he said. "They're still a big part of this population."

(Additional reporting by Ros Krasny and Gabriel Debenedetti in Washington; and David Adams in Miami; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)