(IBD) For Susan Rice Benghazi Was Kenya 1998 Deja Vu - Embassies Bombed, Americans Died

[Daniel John Sobieski]

Parallels: A mission was attacked after warnings, Americans were  killed after security requests were denied, and a diplomat went on TV to explain  it all — our current U.N. ambassador, after embassy bombings in 1998.

'What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the  attacks on both embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African  region for our State Department," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday  after two hours with our U.N. ambassador. "In both cases, the ambassador begged  for additional security."

In both cases, Susan Rice was involved more than she would like to admit.

In the spring of 1998, Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, sent  an emotional letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright begging for a more  secure embassy in the face of mounting terrorist threats and a warning that she  was the target of an assassination plot.

The State Department had repeatedly denied her request, citing a lack of  money. But that kind of response, she wrote Albright, was "endangering the lives  of embassy personnel."

A matter of months later, on Aug. 7, 1998, the American embassies in Tanzania  and Kenya were simultaneously attacked with car bombs. In Kenya, 12 American  diplomats and more than 200 Africans were killed.

As in Benghazi, requests for more security were denied, warnings were issued,  prior incidents were ignored and Susan Rice went on TV to explain it all.

Within 24 hours, Rice, then assistant secretary of state for African affairs,  went on PBS as spokesperson for the administration — just as she was regarding  Benghazi when she parroted the administration's false narrative on five Sunday  talk shows on Sept. 16, 2012, that Benghazi was caused by a flash mob enraged by  an Internet video. Then, as now, she worked for a Clinton.

Read More At IBD:  http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/113012-635391-rice-involve...