Samantha Power speaks after President Obama announces her nomination (Credit: AP)

Unlike with many of President Obama’s recent nominees, including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and several other nominations throughout the executive branch, Republicans and conservatives seem to be pausing before going on the attack in the case of Power.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will be key in having Power make it through his committee. When asked for comment, Corker seemed open to the idea of Power taking over at the U.N. “I don’t know Samantha Power personally, but now that the president has nominated her to the U.N., I look forward to meeting her to understand her views and review her record as the Senate considers her nomination for this important foreign policy position,” Corker said in an emailed statement.

One vote that Power has already won over is that of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), another member of the Foreign Relations Committee. McCain in a statement called Power “well-qualified for this important position and hope the Senate will move forward on her nomination as soon as possible.” McCain had previously led a smear campaign against Ambassador Rice after news that Obama might nominate her as the next Secretary of State. Obama also announced today that Rice will come to the White House to be the next national security adviser, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.

Neoconservative pundit Max Boot, liberal groups like the United Nations Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League have also offered support for Power’s nomination. This could prove key in an institution where dozens of Obama nominees languish for lack of a vote, including several key sub-Cabinet posts.

Other conservatives and members of the Republican Party are, if not as vocal, keeping quiet on Power so far. Sen. James Risch (R-ID) had no comment on the nomination, according to his office. None of the four other Republicans on the committee ThinkProgress reached out to — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — responded to a request for comment on Power’s nomination. Even the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been outspoken against both the interventionist policies Power has often promoted and the United Nations in general, did not put out an immediate statement on Power’s nomination. Likewise, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office declined to make any sort of statement until Power reaches committee.

In introducing Power in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, President Obama called her a “relentless advocate for American interest and values.” Obama also highlighted Power’s role as the lead White House staffer on issues related to the U.N. in her previous role as the National Security Staff’s senior director for multilateral affairs. “She knows the U.N.’s strengths,” Obama said, “She knows its weaknesses. She knows American interests are advanced when we can rally the world to our side. And she knows that we have to stand up for the things that we believe in.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, who will be Power’s boss once she is at Turtle Bay, praised Power’s nomination in a statement, and singled out their shared affinity of the Boston Red Sox. Once Rice moves to the White House, and until Power is confirmed and in place, Deputy Permanent Representative Amb. Rosemary DiCarlo will serve as acting Permanent Representative, including most likely presiding over the U.N. Security Council when the U.S. takes over the rotating presidency in July.

Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee (Credit: AP)

Despite disagreements on how to make it happen, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed on Tuesday that strong action needs to be taken to combat sexual assault in the military.

Today’s hearing is the first in the Armed Services Committee in over a decade on the issue of sexual assault, held in the aftermath of several damning reports and scandals involving an epidemic of assault in the armed forces. Summing up the feelings of many speakers, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) related a story to the committee of a woman who asked if he could give her daughter his unqualified support in joining the military. “I could not,” McCain said, adding, “I cannot overstate my disgust and disappointment over the continued reports of sexual misconduct in our military.”

Several pieces of legislation have already been introduced in both the House and Senate to change the status quo, many including provisions that would do away with the commander’s ability as the convening authority to overturn sexual assault convictions as was seen in February. That incident sparked the explosion in discussion surrounding the issue, bringing it to the forefront of the country’s attention.

Some proposed legislation, however, would go further, completely removing sexual crimes from the military chain of command. The latter proposal was met with strong pushback from the Joint Chiefs, citing the difficulty in singling out rape and other sexual assault from the chain of command. “If I honestly believed that pulling the commanding officer, the convening authority, the disposition authority out of the chain command would fix it, then, sir, I would raise my hand and vote for it today,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos told the panel.

The other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed with Amos when questioned. “I don’t know how to take it out of the chain of command and then…put the victim back in if they come back or the report is reviewed, the investigation is reviewed and it’s returned and they say here you go, it’s back again,” Commander of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said. “I just don’t understand how to do that yet.”
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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

McCain has been a forceful advocate of U.S. military intervention in Syria and has spent months in television and other media interviews trying to make his case. The Arizona Republican continued that campaign last night during an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, highlighting the war crimes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have committed to justify more U.S. intervention. When Rose noted that rebels are also committing war crimes, McCain brushed them off:

ROSE: But at the same time you do hear about atrocities on the other side as well. You know, wherever it’s coming from within the other side you do see not only stories but video?

MCCAIN: But you know, Charlie, you see that as isolated incidents of people who have just gotten so battle-hardened and angry and this happens in warfare. What you’re seeing from the other side is orchestrated training and tactics to intimidate and cow the population from the Bashar al-Assad side. So it’s — it’s dramatically, mind you, different. Horrible things are happening on both sides but with Bashar al-Assad’s forces it is a tactic that they use to intimidate and cow the population.

Rose later challenged the idea of greater U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war, noting that — because many of the forces battling Assad have strong ties to al-Qaeda — there’s a chance that those who take over in the event Assad would fall would be no friend to the United States. But McCain dismissed that concern as well, suggesting — most likely correctly — that any Sunni al-Qeada affiliated group won’t be allied with Shiite dominated Iran:

MCCAIN: So if Bashar al-Assad wins the connection to Hezbollah remains, Iranians mischief throughout the region continues. [...]

ROSE: Notwithstanding that Syria might become a failed state and might be ruled by, you know, a group of people who have no interest in good relationships with the United States?

MCCAIN: But not an ally of Iran, seeking to facilitate their efforts to create mischief throughout the Middle East. I mean I’m not saying it will be a Jeffersonian democracy and it may be long and difficult. But there is no doubt of the relationship between Bashar al-Assad and Iran and Hezbollah, that’s why Hezbollah is in, because if they lose Bashar al-Assad Hezbollah loses their lifeline.

Watch the clip:

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Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) (Credit: AP)

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney asked Gohmert on Gaffney’s radio show this week what he thought of McCain’s recent trip to Syria — which Gaffney described as McCain “hobnobbing with Jihadists” — and wondered whether “we’re going to get a proper investigation of the Benghazi-Gate scandal,” a “scandal” Gaffney said he believes “Sen. McCain’s bad advice got us into.” Gohmert agreed that McCain is to blame for Benghazi because McCain supported and advocated for the U.S. led war in Libya that ultimately helped Libyan rebels oust Muammar Qaddafi:

GOHMERT: Yeah and then we know if it had not been for Sen. McCain and President Obama being for what we knew at the time included al-Qaeda in the rebel forces then we would still have a U.S. ambassador and three others alive today because Benghazi would not have happened. But by giving power to the rebel forces that included al Qaeda that brought that whole mess about and helped create problems in Tunisia and Algeria. So I’m not sure what to think about his going to Syria. If history is any lesson the people he met with he wants us to help should be very careful about what Sen. McCain’s support could mean for them.

Listen to the interview clip here:

Starting from the day after the attacks and continuing to this day, the Republicans have been politicizing the Benghazi attacks in an attempt to try to bring down President Obama and his administration in one of the more absurd faux-scandal mongering episodes in recent memory.

In fact, McCain was one of the GOP’s leading attack-dogs on the Obama administration over its handling of the Benghazi attacks. Now that he is being accused by some in his own Party of being responsible for the attacks themselves is an new and interesting — if not completely unsurprising — twist in the otherwise bizarre episode that has been “Benghazi-Gate.”

Full transcript:
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Back in 2004, in a video addressed to the American people, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden described his “bleed until bankruptcy” strategy. “All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies,” bin Laden taunted. “So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”

The twin goals of this strategy were to drain the U.S. of resources by baiting it into expensive, open-ended military interventions like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the resulting anger over those interventions causing more people to join Al Qaeda’s cause.

I was reminded of that by these specific remarks from President Obama’s speech on counterterrorism yesterday:

The AUMF is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.

There was a lot to chew on in the president’s speech, and obviously we’ll have to wait and see how much weight the president actually puts behind some of the reforms he suggested, but I think this core passage represents another important shift away from the rhetorical construct of a “Global War on Terror.”

Meanwhile, on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, four of the Senate’s leading hawks — Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Saxby Chambliss (GA) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) — responded as you might expect to the prospect of the loss of that rhetorical construct, which has proven extremely politically beneficial to hawks over the last decade.

“I believe we are still in a long, drawn-out conflict with Al Qaeda. to somehow argue that Al Qaeda is ‘on the run’ comes from a degree of unreality that, to me, is really incredible,” said McCain, adding: “Al Qaeda’s ‘on the run’ is expanding all over the Middle East from Mali to Yemen and all places in between and to somehow think that we can bring the authorization of the use of military force to a complete closure contradicts the reality of the facts on the ground. Al Qaeda will be with us for a long time.”

“The President’s speech today will be viewed by terrorists as a victory,” Chambliss declared.

Graham took the chance to ding the president on Iraq: “Iraq is a country that went through hell, was inside the 10-yard line, the surge did work and it’s falling apart because the president chose not to leave any American soldiers behind when 10,000 or 12,000 would have made a difference.”

Leaving aside why Graham thinks 10,000 or 12,000 U.S. troops would have made a difference in Iraq when over 100,000 couldn’t stop it from descending into civil war in 2006 (not to mention the tension between claiming to support democracy in Iraq while bashing the president for not working harder to circumvent democracy in Iraq in order to keep U.S. troops there), it’s remarkable that these Congressional leaders essentially want America to keep playing into Al Qaeda’s “bleed until bankruptcy” strategy.

Obama and Clinton watch as Chris Stevens' remains are returned to the U.S. (Photo: Getty)

Last week, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — himself an ardent proponent of several conspiracy theories — said that the investigation on what happened in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya will lead to articles of impeachment being filed against Obama. Inhofe claimed that Benghazi would prove to be the “most egregious” cover-up in history — worse than the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and Iran-Contra.

There is to date zero evidence that President Obama committed any crimes regarding Benghazi. But rather than relegating Inhofe’s statement to the fringe where it belongs, the majority of Sunday shows’ anchors chose to ask their guests to comment on it:

CNN’s RELIABLE SOURCES

HOWARD KURTZ: Well, at the same time, Margaret Carlson, have some conservative outlets hiked this into crusade with talk of impeachment?

CNN’s STATE OF THE UNION

CANDY CROWLEY: That’s pretty big. Do you see something in Benghazi either in the handling before, during, or after with the talking points that were scrubbed that the i-word, the impeachment word should come up?

ABC’S THIS WEEK

MARTHA RADDITZ: Let’s look at what happened because of the e-mails. Tom Pickering said the idea of a cover-up is absurd. Stephen King, Republican from Iowa, said it was bigger than Watergate. And this is what James Inhofe said

Despite the anchors’ best efforts, the guests themselves pushed back, refusing to go along with attempts to goad them into joining Inhofe’s belief in a future impeachment. “You know, they’ve been looking for Watergate for so long that, you know, they went too far on Benghazi,” said Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson to Kurtz. Even ardent believer in a Benghazi cover-up Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) demurred when faced with Inhofe’s comments. “With all due respect, I think this is a serious issue. I will even give the president the benefit of the doubt on some of these things,” McCain told Raddatz.

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

McCain was on Fox News this afternoon when he made the claim, railing once more against the administration’s handling of the attack’s aftermath. “What we don’t know is what he did in the intervening hours between then and when he left for Las Vegas,” McCain told host Neil Cavuto, continuing a right-wing meme that has speculated that the President went to sleep during the attack.

McCain then compared the administration’s actions in Benghazi to those during and after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden as evidence of the cover-up he has long alleged:

McCAIN: Now, we’ve got dramatic pictures of everybody watching the raid that took out bin Laden. Right? We don’t have any pictures, we don’t have depiction of what the president was doing while the lives of four brave Americans were being taken in this what is clearly a terrorist attack by an Al Qaeda affiliated organization.

Watch McCain’s statements here:

The problem with that statement, however, is that the White House did release a photo from the night of the attack in Benghazi. On the White House’s Flickr account, you can see the photo taken by White House photographer Pete Souza clearly labeled “September 11, 2012.” In the photo, then-Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough can be seen briefing Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the situation in the Middle East:

This isn’t even close to the first time that McCain has fumbled the facts on Benghazi to score political points against Obama. The Arizona Republican led the smear campaign against U.S. Ambassador the U.N. Susan Rice last October over the administration’s response to the attacks.