Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) today alleged that U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice has been “tainted” by the tragedy in Benghazi, preventing her from being qualified to become Secretary of State.

Duncan’s statement showcases that Republican members of the House of Representatives are not giving up yet on pillorying Rice for her role in the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11 assault in Libya that killed four American citizens. Duncan was the author of a letter, signed by over ninety House Republicans, urging President Obama to select anyone other than Rice to fill the role of Secretary of State in his second term.

On Fox and Friends this morning, Duncan stood by his denouncement of Rice when asked about her seeming willingness to answer questions related to her Sept. 16 statements explaining the administration’s knowledge of the attack at that time:

DUNCAN: Well, it comes down to her credibility now. Do we want someone as Secretary of State that is somehow tainted in this whole Benghazi issue. I don’t think so. I think the bigger question to ask is — you know, she should have known the information, should have all the talking points, the truth of the matter. The fact that she misled the American people, whether its intentional or unintentional, she is tainted in this issue.

Watch Duncan here:

Duncan would probably need to explain how Rice has been “tainted” from the Benghazi fallout seeing that every GOP attack on her as a result has been found to be false, misleading or baseless.

But while Rice is not the nominee yet, she is indicated to be the leading favorite for the job. Duncan and his cohorts ire would in no way affect a potential confirmation of Rice; only the Senate confirms the President’s nominees for Cabinet-level positions.

In the upper chamber, controlled by Democrats, cooler heads seem to be prevailing regarding the chance of a Rice nomination. Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of Rice’s harshest critics, has backed off from his attacks. Rice for her part has reached out to McCain, saying “I have great respect for Senator McCain and his service to our country. I always have, and I always will. I do think that some of the statements he’s made about me have been unfounded, but I look forward to having the opportunity at the appropriate time to discuss all of this with him.”

Shortly after news broke about a fatal attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Obama of “sympathiz[ing] with those who waged the attacks.” And Romney continued to make Benghazi-related attacks a centerpiece of his campaign even after his efforts were debunked and widely condemned.

Mitt Romney lost. But that has not prevented Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) from picking up this torch. Shortly after Romney conceded his loss earlier this month, McCain set his sites on UN Ambassador Susan Rice, a likely nominee to succeed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Pointing to several television appearances where Rice communicated the intelligence community’s as-yet imperfect understanding of what happened during the Benghazi attacks, McCain promised that “I will do everything in my power to block her from becoming Secretary of State.”

On Fox News Sunday this morning, however, McCain sang a much more conciliatory tune, backing off his hardline opposition to Rice:

HOST: You say that you will do everything in your power to block Susan Rice’s nomination if the President decides to name her to be secretary of state . . . . Is there anything that Ambassador Rice can do to change your mind?

MCCAIN: Sure, she can give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. And I’ll be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her. Why did she say that al Qaeda has been decimated in her statement here on this program? Al Qaeda hasn’t been decimated. They’re on the rise. They’re all over Iraq.

Watch it:

If McCain isn’t sure why Rice said that al Qaeda has been decimated, he may want to ask Osama bin Laden. When he fails at that, he can then ask the National Counterterrorism Center, which found that “a 16 percent drop in successful attacks by the al Qaeda network; a 65 percent drop in successful attacks by the al Qaeda network outside Africa; and a 35 percent drop in casualties caused by al Qaeda” in just the period from May 2011 until May 2012. Twenty-two senior-level al Qaeda operatives and leaders were captured or killed in the same one year window.

Regardless, hopefully today’s more conciliatory statement is a sign that McCain will back off his efforts to inject partisan politics into our nation’s security.

The Republicans’ new focus of attack in the faux “Benghazi-gate” scandal is Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, claiming that he lied about the source of changes to talking points on the Benghazi attack given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Yesterday, a DNI spokesperson debunked accusations made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans that the White House changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points, saying that it was the intelligence community that made the “substantive” changes to the talking points. Moreover, former CIA head David Petraeus and other top intelligence officials have said there was no politicization of the process and that the talking points were not altered to minimize the role of extremists but to reflect the best intelligence at the time.

McCain appeared to accept the new information but wondered why Clapper and other DNI officials did not provide this information during closed door hearings last week. And now that all their earlier attacks on Rice have fell apart, Republicans and conservative media figures are directing their attacks at Clapper, a George W. Bush appointee:

– BILL O’REILLY: Now it’s James Clapper, President Obama’s national security guy who is saying, “Oh, it’s me. I sent Rice out there and I took out all the al Qaeda stuff.” I’m not buying it. None of this adds up. … All right so there’s a lot of lying going on here.

– CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I’m not buying it because the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that a week ago in classified testimony that same Clapper said that they had no idea who changed the talking points and now a week later he seems to say he did? That’s kind of strange. I mean I’ve seen amnesia in my day in my clinical days and that one is pretty quick, one week.

– TUCKER CARLSON: I hate to think that the director of National Intelligence lied, is a liar. But I’m not sure I see an alternate explanation. Apparently, he’s contradicting what he testified to just last week. Is there another explanation for this?”

– FOX NEWS’ STEVE DOOCY: They did say it is out of the [DNI] office. It’s not him per se, so we’re supposed to believe that a Clapper aide changed what Petraeus had said? That’s very, very curious.

– REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC): This is the head of our national intelligence and he changed his mind within the course of 24 hours. So how are you possibly going to have any confidence in what he says?

And while Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) didn’t call Clapper a liar, he told Fox News’ Stuart Varney that he now might be involved in the alleged cover up:

GINGREY: Now have you got someone who basically can trump the CIA, especially if the president says to him — I am not suggesting that he did, but he could have — look, James, we need to kind of clean this up a little bit.. We are doing really well. We’re right about time for the election and we are doing very well on national security and this could blow our cover.

Watch the video compilation of the attacks against Clapper:

The right wing has spent months trying to bring down the Obama administration in politicization the attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead and after all of their conspiracy theories and baseless attacks have been debunked, the rabbit hole appears to have led to Clapper and who knows where it will end.

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) appeared on CNN Wednesday morning to press his case against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the target of Republican criticism for initially claiming that the Sept. 11 attacks on Benghazi were inspired by spontaneous protests to an anti-Islamic video. Burgess joined 97 House Republicans in opposing Rice’s potential nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, even though her public statements about the incident originated from unclassified talking points provided by the intelligence community.

Host Soledad O’Brien challenged Burgess’ opposition to Susan Rice, noting that Republicans had supported Condoleezza Rice’s nomination as Secretary of State in 2005, despite the Bush administration’s role in the massive intelligence failures that led to the Iraq war. Burgess struggled to explain the contradiction. He initially claimed that the media was far more critical of Bush’s intelligence failures than Obama, but when O’Brien laughed away that claim, he told her to take up the question with Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), both of whom supported Condoleezza but now oppose Susan:

O’BRIEN: I have asked others before how this does not compare, the Susan Rice issue, to the Condoleezza Rice issue on weapons of mass destruction. She was also wrong when she was the national security adviser, right? … Fast forward three years in 2005 when she was up to be secretary of state, it was Lindsey Graham who was furious that the Democrats were pushing back. It was Sen John mccain who were furious that the Democrats were pushing back on Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. She was wrong on weapons of mass destruction. How is this different?

BURGESS: The difference is the scrutiny provided by our free press in this country. Condoleezza Rice was exposed to withering criticism by the press. I don’t see that happening now. Maybe I’ve missed something in the talking points, but I don’t see that happening. ….

O’BRIEN: So you’re confusing me there for a moment. When you say the scrutiny on the press — are you saying five days after comments of weapons of mass destruction, you feel like the media was picking apart Condoleezza Rice? I don’t think that’s true, Sir. Most people say that’s not the case. It took a long time. …. Hey, I’m all about scrutiny. I guess I like consistency, too. You were not calling for more scrutiny and you weren’t saying that the fact that Condoleezza Rice was wrong on weapons of mass destruction was going to damage her credibility as secretary of state. Again, McCain and Lindsey Graham were supporting that. It seems contradictory to me.

BURGESS: You’ll have to take that up with Senator McCain and Senator Graham.

Watch it:

Indeed, the media largely accepted Bush’s argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and rarely aired dissident voices or challenged the administration’s allegations.

The very same Republicans who advanced these false claims and remained silent after it became obvious that the Bush administration molded intelligence to substantiate war with Iraq, are now criticizing Susan Rice’s performance. The Obama administration has changed its assessment of the events that led up to the Libya incident as the intelligence evolved.

An American official involved in formulating and editing U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s talking points on the Benghazi attack told the Los Angeles Times that they were not edited for political reasons or to avoid undermining the Obama administration’s narrative that it has severely diminished al Qaeda’s capabilities.

Former CIA director David Petraeus said last week that the CIA believed al Qaeda was responsible for the attack but that assessment was later taken out of Rice’s talking points after an interagency review, Petraeus said, to deemphasize al Qaeda’s role in the Sept. 11 Benghazi assault in favor of a more general assessment that “extremists” carried out the attack.

Republicans led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) then accused the White House of making the change to bolster President Obama’s political standing during an election season. “[Rice's] talking points came from the White House, not from the DNI,” McCain charged last week, referring to the Director of National Intelligence.

Even though Petraeus reportedly told lawmakers that the CIA approved the changes and “there was no politicization of the process,” a CNN report on Monday further debunked McCain’s theory. Intelligence officials said that the intelligence community, not the White House, had changed the talking points. And today, the Times backed that story up with more reporting based on information from “senior” intelligence sources involved saying that none of the edits were made for political reasons:

“Early drafts of the talking points included several analytic judgments that were debated and adjusted during the internal intelligence community coordination process,” said the senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue involved classified material. “The adjustments were focused on producing talking points that provided the best information available at the time, protected sensitive details and reflected the evolving nature of rapidly incoming intelligence.”

Officials at the CIA and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by James R. Clapper, “were all communicating on an email chain, which is normal in our coordination process,” the official said. “Suggestions were being made and implemented in a collaborative manner.”

The CIA drafted the initial talking points, and they were not “edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack,” said a second U.S. official familiar with how the material was edited

McCain has been attacking Rice for weeks, a campaign that escalated recently to vowing to “block” her potential nomination as the next Secretary of State. But the Arizona Republican appears to be backing off. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and other senators friendly to McCain smacked down his request for a “Watergate-style” investigation into Benghazi. And yesterday, in a statement released after CNN’s report that the White House was not the office that changed Susan Rice’s talking points, McCain didn’t take issue with those facts and instead complained that he didn’t have this information sooner.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) today issued a statement essentially conceding that he was wrong in accusing the White House of changing U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s talking points on Benghazi for political purposes.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers last week that the CIA’s assessment that al Qaeda was responsible for the Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi was taken out of Rice’s talking points after an interagency review. McCain and his allies then claimed the White House took out the talking points because it supposedly undercut the Obama administration’s narrative that it had severely weakened al Qaeda.

But Intelligence officials told CNN yesterday that the intelligence community was responsible for the changes made to Rice’s talking points. The Director of National Intelligence spokesperson said that the White House did not make any “substantive changes.”

McCain responded today and instead of taking issue with the substance of the report, the Arizona Republican wondered why administration and intelligence officials didn’t offer this information in closed door sessions:

“I participated in hours of hearings in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week regarding the events in Benghazi, where senior intelligence officials were asked this very question, and all of them – including the Director of National Intelligence himself – told us that they did not know who made the changes. Now we have to read the answers to our questions in the media. There are many other questions that remain unanswered. But this latest episode is another reason why many of us are so frustrated with, and suspicious of, the actions of this Administration when it comes to the Benghazi attack.”

Of course, it’s possible that the officials did not know who changed the talking points when McCain and other lawmakers asked last week, and later made inquires into the matter.

But McCain, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Republicans, has lead a proverbial witch hunt against the Obama administration and Rice, claiming that the administration deliberately misled the public about the nature of the attacks. Today’s news comes just a week after McCain went on national television and claimed that Rice’s “talking points came from the White House, not from the DNI.” He added on Fox that “I think it’s patently obvious that the talking points that Ambassador Rice had didn’t come from the CIA. It came from the White House.” For weeks, McCain has lambasted the administration for engaging in “either a cover-up or the worst kind of incompetence” on the Benghazi attack. McCain also said last week that “[e]verybody knew that it was an al Qaeda attack and she continued to tell the world through all of the talk shows [on Sept. 16] that it was a ‘spontaneous demonstration’ sparked by a video.”

McCain has also said he would block the nomination of Rice for Secretary of State, should the President choose her, saying he would “do everything in my power to block her,” that Rice is “not qualified” for the position and that “she should have known better.” He subsequently said he would bock any nominee Obama put forward.

But now that every angle of McCain’s attacks have been completely debunked, all he has left is to complain about not being told that intelligence officials didn’t give him this information sooner.

Intelligence officials told CNN that the intelligence community, not the White House, changed the now infamous Benghazi talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before her appearance on several morning news shows in September. CNN quoted both the spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence and an anonymous official “familiar with the drafting of the talking points.” The DNI spokesperson said that the only “substantive changes” came from the intelligence community and not the White House.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers in a closed door hearing last week that the CIA’s original assessment on the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack was that it was carried out by al Qaeda affiliated groups. But he reportedly said that analysis was later taken out after an interagency review in favor of a more general assessment that “extremists” carried out the attack to broaden the scope and not tip off terrorists to U.S. knowledge on the matter. And despite the fact that Petraeus said the CIA approved the change, Republicans, led by Republican senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), have accused the White House of stripping the language for political reasons.

But Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, told CNN that it wasn’t the White House’s decision:

“The intelligence community made substantive, analytical changes before the talking points were sent to government agency partners for their feedback. There were no substantive changes made to the talking points after they left the intelligence community.”

Another anonymous intelligence official echoed Turner, saying that the changes were made based on legitimate intelligence and for legal purposes:

“First, the information about individuals linked to al Qaeda was derived from classified sources. Second, when links were so tenuous – as they still are – it makes sense to be cautious before pointing fingers so you don’t set off a chain of circular and self-reinforcing assumptions. Third, it is important to be careful not to prejudice a criminal investigation in its early stages.”

Indeed, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the New York Times last week that in his closed door briefing, Petraeus “was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda.”

The fight over the talking points will most likely continue; it has even become a campaign cause for Republican senators like Lindsey Graham. Others like John McCain have vowed to do “everything” to block the potential nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State. But Democrats in Congress and media commentators are beginning to wonder why Republicans are picking a substance-free fight with Rice, a woman and an African-American, after the drubbing they took in last month’s elections among those demographics.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) this morning defended U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, calling out Republican use of “code words” in attacking Rice’s professional capabilities.

Appearing on CNN, Clyburn, the number three Democrat in the House of Representatives and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, added his voice to a growing number of lawmakers concerned with the appearance of the Republican Party potentially blocking a minority nominee to the President’s cabinet so soon after a bruising electoral loss among minorities.

In particular, Clyburn focused on a letter circulated by more than 90 House Republicans that uses terms like “incompetent” to describe Rice’s performance at the U.N. in discouraging Obama from nominating Rice to take over as Secretary of State:

CLYBURN: You know, these are code words. We heard them during the campaign. During this recent campaign, we heard [Romney surrogate John] Sununu calling our President ‘lazy’, ‘incompetent.’ These kinds of terms that those of us, especially those of us that who were born and raised in the South, we’ve been hearing these little words and phrases all of our lives. And we get insulted by them. Susan Rice is as competent as anyone you will find. And to place that word on her causes problems with people like Marcia Fudge and it certainly causes a problem with me. I don’t like those words. Say that she was wrong for doing it, but don’t call her incompetent.

Clyburn isn’t alone in his assessment of the issues the Republican Party is running up again in their pursuit of Rice. The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe also were incredulous that the GOP would be looking for this fight, against a highly regarded woman of color, so quickly. Host Joe Scarborough, a Republican himself, was struck by how his party seemed unwilling to moderate its tone, with his co-host Mika Brzezinski saying, “It looks like a bunch of old white men running women out of Washington.”

Watch all three statements here:

Rice is currently being targeted by House and Senate Republicans for her role in the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11 attack against a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. While the intelligence community has provided ample evidence that the talking points that Rice delivered on Sept. 16 were accurate at the time, this has not stopped Republicans from preemptively seeking to block a Rice appointment to take over for out-going Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is quickly learning the ropes in her role as the new partner to some of the Obama administration’s harshest foreign policy critics, jumping more fully into the fray on the now heavily-politicized response to the Sept. 11 attack in Libya.

On Fox News this morning, Ayotte gave what was akin to a greatest hits version of the fact/logic-free Republican narrative on Libya, before focusing in on the administration’s not specifically referring to al Qaeda in their public remarks on the attack.

This newest source of outrage of Ayotte and other Republicans stems from the fact that the CIA’s original unclassified talking points, used by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice in explaining the administration’s then-understanding of the attack on Sept. 16, were edited before delivery by Rice. In particular, a direct reference to terrorist groups was changed to read “extremists” during an interagency review to both broaden the scope of the points and not warn suspects of the extent of U.S. knowledge. However, this explanation did not satisfy Ayotte:

AYOTTE: Fourteen days later he did not call it a terrorist attack, nor did he reference it as connected to al Qaeda or an al Qaeda affiliated group. In fact the only reference he made to al Qaeda in that U.N. speech to the world was that al Qaeda had been weakened and Osama bin Laden was dead. This raises additional questions, it goes beyond Ambassador Rice. First of all, why were the talking points changed? It doesn’t make any sense to me that we were trying to dupe al Qaeda, that doesn’t pass the laugh test. But also, why was the President out fourteen days later and still failing to call it a terrorist attack to the world?

Watch Ayotte here:

The certainty that Ayotte shows is in no way shared by the administration or the intelligence community. Investigations into the assault’s perpetrators and their motives are still ongoing, with no official determination given yet by Congress, the State Department, or the FBI. While potential links between the Libyan militia Ansar Al-Sharia and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have surfaced, there have been no “smoking guns” that the latter helped plan the attack, counter to conservative claims.

While Ayotte and others attempt to learn where the change came from, former CIA Direct David Petraeus has already informed Congress that the talking points used by Rice were approved by the CIA, despite GOP concerns about the original content being changed at the Deputies Committee-level of the National Security Council. The White House has also denied that the edit came from it specifically, having only swapped the word “consulate” for “mission.”

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