Maureen Dowd piles on to GOP criticism of Susan Rice

Maureen Dowd. (Fred Conrad photo)

My word! It's as if the ghost of William Safire suddenly sat down on Maureen Dowd's lap and wrote a column for her, ripping Susan Rice up one side and down the other.

Condi Rice sold her soul. Susan Rice merely rented hers on the talk shows one Sunday in September...
     Writing in a 2002 book about President Clinton's failure to intervene in the genocide in Rwanda, Samantha Power, now a National Security Council official, suggested that Rice was swayed by domestic politics when, as a rising star at the N.S.C. who would soon become Clinton's director for African affairs, she mused about the '94 midterms, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?"
     An Africa expert, Rice should have realized that when a gang showed up with R.P.G.'s and mortars in a place known as a hotbed of Qaeda sympathizers and Islamic extremist training camps, it was not anger over a movie. She should have been savvy enough to wonder why the wily Hillary was avoiding the talk shows.
     ...[The president's] argument that Rice "had nothing to do with Benghazi," raises the question: Then why was she the point person?