Leadership: Obama surrogate Susan Rice is again on TV, this time falsely claiming that the military never recommended ground troops against the Islamic State. Do Americans really swallow misinformation this easily?
Less than a month ago, we and others pointed out the disturbing rift between a commander in chief who places politics before security and the commanders to whom he won't listen.
We noted Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staff of the U.S. Army and former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said reinforcements to U.S. troops recently deployed in Iraq may be needed.
We cited Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey's congressional testimony that he would not rule out U.S. ground forces if Obama's proxy war fails.
Most extraordinary of all, Gen. Lloyd Austin, appointed by Obama as the first ever black Centcom commander, recommended combat troops, as Dempsey confirmed.
Then retired Marine Gen. James Mattis accused the president of tying the military's hands by taking the ground forces option "off the table, up front."
Finally, ex-Obama Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta warned of "kind of a 30-year war" ahead, extending beyond IS to Islamist threats in various African countries too.
Yet here comes ex-U.N. ambassador and now-national security adviser Susan Rice, to ask us to swallow another falsehood. "There has been no recommendation from military commanders on the ground, or here in Washington, that the United States put ground combat forces into Iraq," Rice claimed. "That's not come up the chain to anybody at the White House."
The "not come up the chain" quip is one of those Washington prevarications, not quite down at the same level as Bill Clinton's "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," but designed to mislead all the same.
Rice was Barack Obama's preferred choice to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but because of her lies during Obama's re-election campaign on five different Sunday news shows right after the Benghazi attacks, her nomination would have crashed and burned. She was named national security adviser instead, requiring no Senate confirmation.
Rice also claimed "the government of Iraq has said very plainly" that it doesn't want "American troops in combat." But Anbar Provincial Council deputy head Falleh al-Issawi told CNN last week that the council asked Iraq's central government to request U.S. ground forces to prevent Anbar province's imminent collapse. And the Iraq government says it will consider it.
This is an administration that cannot be trusted to win a war anymore than it can be trusted to tell the truth.
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