Today John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador under George W. Bush, said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Australia is “very important” and necessary, undercutting attacks from conservative news outlets such as Fox News and Drudge that Clinton is vacationing Australia rather than testifying in front of a congressional committee about the Benghazi attacks.

Speaking on Fox News today, Bolton said:

Let me first say a word in defense of Secretary Clinton and Secretary Panetta being in Australia. This is for an annual meeting called the AUSMIN that we have and I think it is very important that we demonstrate solidarity with the Australians so the fact that they’re out of town shouldn’t be concerning.

Watch the clip:

Specifically, Fox Nation propagated a myth that Clinton skipped a hearing on Benghazi to drink wine in Australia. The Drudge Report picked up the story as well, going even further with its headline: “Hillary can’t make House hearing on Benghazi; busy visiting friends, wine tasting in Australia.” Drudge and Fox link to an article in the Herald Sun, a newspaper, as Media Matters pointed out, that is owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Indeed, the Australia meeting is crucial. At the meeting today, Clinton and Panetta announced that the military “will station a powerful radar and a space telescope in Australia as part of its strategic shift toward Asia.” Other key topics including Afghanistan will be covered as well, the Voice of America notes, “The two countries will also discuss plans to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Australia, which has 1,550 troops in Afghanistan, is the biggest military contributor to the campaign outside NATO.”

During a press conference today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made it clear why he will oppose U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State: the war in Iraq.

During the press conference, Graham and fellow Republican senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte called for a Select Committee to investigate the attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya and Graham said he wouldn’t vote for Rice to become Secretary of State, arguing that her handling of the Benghazi attacks is similar to when the Bush administration misled the American public on the course of the war in Iraq:

GRAHAM: Somebody has got to start paying a price around this place. And back to the Bush administration. When we went to Iraq, we came back and said there are more than a few dead-enders. What they’re telling you, the Bush administration, about the level of security in Iraq doesn’t match what we see. And I voted against General Casey, because I didn’t think he deserved to be promoted after the way he did his job in Iraq. I don’t think that she deserves to be promoted. There are a lot of qualified people in this country the president could pick. But I am dead-set in making sure that we don’t promote anyone that was involved in the Benghazi debacle.

Watch Graham’s statement here:

But of course Graham’s comparison between the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq and the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi makes no sense. On the one hand, Bush administration officials, despite the obvious evidence, were saying the situation in Iraq was better than it was (one Bush official even admitted the administration was looking at Iraq through “rose colored glasses”). By contrast, the investigation into what happened in Benghazi is ongoing. When Ambassador Rice spoke to the public on Sept. 16, she presented the intelligence community’s initial assessment with a strong dose of hedging and provisos that the description of events may change as facts emerge. Rice was using available information to explain what happened. For that, Graham, McCain and others in the GOP have relentlessly attacked Susan Rice to tar her as being untrustworthy. President Obama, while not ruling out whether he would nominate, hit back against McCain and Graham for attacking Rice during this afternoon’s press conference.

And in terms of voting for a cabinet member with questionable credentials, back in 2005, Graham and McCain themselves were singing a different tune. They defended President Bush’s nomination of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her central role in spreading the false intelligence that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

President Obama has yet to nominate anyone to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, but Republicans are already lining up in opposition to potential replacement U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, citing her complicity in the administration’s alleged failures in responding to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) promised to filibuster Rice’s nomination and “do whatever to block the nomination that is within our power.” “She’s not qualified,” McCain explained, arguing that she misled the public by initially attributing the September 11 Benghazi attack to protests over an anti-Islam video. He claimed that at a minimum, Rice is guilty of “not being very bright, because it was obvious that this was not a ‘flash mob’ and there was additional information by the time she went on every news show…in America.”

But interestingly, McCain took a far different approach to another Rice in 2005. When President George W. Bush nominated National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to the post, McCain defended the nomination, despite Rice’s central role in spreading the false intelligence that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. The Democrats held hours of hearing and ultimately confirmed Rice, but not before McCain accused the opposition of using politics to delay her confirmation and challenging her “integrity”:

McCAIN: Condoleezza Rice is a great American success story. This is what America is all about. A young woman who grew up in a segregated part of America where Americans were not treated equally, to rise to the position of secretary of state. We should have been celebrating, I believe, this remarkable American success story.

Also, I thought that some of the remarks — and I’m not going to mention my colleagues’ names — some of the remarks aimed at her during the hearings challenged her integrity. We can disagree on policy and we disagree on a lot of things, but I think it is very clear that Condoleezza Rice is a person of integrity. And yes, I see this, some lingering bitterness over a very tough campaign. I hope it dissipates soon.

“I can only conclude we’re doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness at the outcome of the elections,” McCain told CBS Morning News on January 27, 2005.

Seven years later, there is no evidence that Susan Rice mislead the public, yet McCain is leading the charge to oppose her. Rice was “speaking from a set of talking points provided by the U.S. intelligence community, which was also provided to Congress. The video has also been cited by those on the ground as being an impetus for the attack in recent weeks, challenging the Republican narrative.”

During a press conference on Wednesday, Obama defended Rice, saying that the has “done exemplary work.” Rice “gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her,” he said, adding that for McCain “to go after the U.N. ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi, who was giving a presentation based on the intelligence she had received…is outrageous.”

Today during his White House press conference, President Obama scolded Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans for attacking America’s U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice regarding intelligence on the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

McCain said today that he and his Republican allies would do anything they can to prevent Rice from becoming the next Secretary of State should President Obama nominate her. Citing comments Rice made soon after the attack that it was sparked in part by an anti-Islam video (a narrative that still has merit), McCain said today that she “should have known better, and if she didn’t know better, she’s not qualified” to be the nation’s top diplomat. “I will do everything in my power to block her from being the United States Secretary of State,” he said.

Today during his press conference, Obama shot back at McCain, calling his attacks on Rice “outrageous,” adding, “When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me”:

OBAMA: But let me say specifically about Susan Rice. She has done exemplarary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill and professionalism and toughness and grace. As I’ve said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.

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. 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. … When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me. And should I choose, if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity of the State Department, then I will nominate her. That’s not a determination that I’ve made yet.

Watch the clip:

The Washington Post reports President Obama signed a secret directive on cyberattack defense designed to enable military personal to act more aggressively in thwarting attacks on public and private networks, known as Presidential Policy Directive 20, in mid-October:

“The new directive is the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an “offensive” and a “defensive” action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism, where an attack can be launched in milliseconds by unknown assailants utilizing a circuitous route. For the first time, the directive explicitly makes a distinction between network defense and cyber operations to guide officials charged with making often rapid decisions when confronted with threats.”

The order updates a 2004 presidential directive by laying out a process to vet operations outside government owned systems. Under the directive, some cyber operations previously considered offensive because they entail going outside defended networks are recognized as defensive in nature, such as “severing the link between an overseas server and a targeted domestic computer.” With this clarification, the Pentagon is expected to finalize new rules of engagement for cyber warefare that will set guidelines for military commanders to be able to act outside of government networks to prevent cyberattacks.

The Obama administration has made a substantial push on cybersecurity policy in recent months, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warning of a “Cyber-Pearl Harbor” around the same time the secret order was reportedly signed. The directive comes out as the White House considers an cybersecurity executive order and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced a vote on Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) cybersecurity proposal that stalled earlier than the year amid online privacy concerns.

David Petraeus’ resignation last week set off a torrid of conspiracy theories in conservative circles, namely, that Petraeus resigned after he was blackmailed by the Obama administration into giving acceptable testimony on the Benghazi attack. Last night, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer embraced that theory and took it a step further, saying the Obama administration “lowered” a sword on Petraeus on election day.

“Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people in the administration at that time?” Krauthammer wonders. But moments later, he answers his own question:

KRAUTHAMMER: Of course it was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line to quote Bill, everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed. I mean, can you imagine what it’s like to be on that pressure and to think it didn’t distort or at least in some way unconsciously influence his testimony? That’s hard to believe.

Watch the clip:

A number of conservatives have been advancing similar theories. Fox News’ Eric Bolling said, “They knew it was a terrorist attack. But why would Gen. Petraeus do it? Was there something being held over his head where they said ‘Hey General, go out there and say video because otherwise we are going to blow this thing wide open.’ That’s one theory.” Chaffetz told Fox News’ Sean Hannity “It’s not a coincidence to me. He is probably the one that knows most about what happened or didn’t happen in Benghazi.”

Today’s news that Petraeus will indeed testify to a congressional committee on the Benghazi attack renders Krauthammer’s and others’ theories moot.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) managed this morning to both defend President Obama’s right to nominate Cabinet members and categorically ban the President from putting forward U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to become Secretary of State.

In discussions on Fox News this morning, McCain refused to say whether he would join the movement to block confirming Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) should he be nominated Secretary of Defense upon the departure of current Secretary Leon Panetta. When doing so, McCain insisted to the Fox and Friends hosts that he believed that the Senate has “to give the President some ability to name his team.” In contrast, McCain didn’t equivocate in his opposition to Rice:

MCCAIN: Susan Rice should have known better, and if she didn’t know better, she’s not qualified. She should have known better. I will do everything in my power to block her from becoming Secretary of State. She has proven that she either doesn’t understand or she is unwilling to accept evidence on its face. [...] She went out and told the American people something that was patently false and defied common sense.

Watch McCain’s full interview here:

McCain was referring to Rice’s appearance on several Sunday news shows on Sept. 16 to explain the Obama administration’s thinking at that time on what caused the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. Rice has since come under attack from the right for her statements on those shows, particularly that the attack was spurred by an anti-Islamic video. It has since been revealed that Rice was speaking from a set of talking points provided by the U.S. intelligence community, which was also provided to Congress. The video has also been cited by those on the ground as being an impetus for the attack in recent weeks, challenging the Republican narrative.

Rice is currently thought to be the leading candidate to replace Hillary Clinton when she departs from Foggy Bottom in the near future, despite the challenges that await her in facing Republicans in the Senate. Individual Senators have the ability to issue holds or blocks on specific nominations or legislation, granting each of the one hundred the ability to prevent Rice from coming to a vote.

During his television appearances this morning, McCain also floated the idea of forming a new Select Committee to investigate the events in Benghazi and the administration response. While the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is holding closed door hearings on Benghazi this week, along with their counterparts in the House, McCain believes that a Watergate-style committee is necessary to find the truth about what happened, as jurisdiction over the investigation spans four committees. “Nobody died during Watergate,” McCain insisted. “Nobody died in Iran-Contra.”