Congress: Time to hold Ben Rhodes to account

Had President George W. Bush’s national security advisers Condoleezza Rice or Stephen Hadley bragged to a journalist that the administration constructed a phony narrative to justify an unpopular foreign policy initiative, using intellectually corrupt members of the press to spread disinformation, surely the Democrats would be calling for impeachment and would drag the braggarts to Capitol Hill to testify under oath. The reporters involved in the deception would be fired, shunned and disgraced. But that’s the standard for a Republican president. The left falsely accused the administration of doing just that in the Iraq War yet when the real thing — a blatant deception in pursuit of a rotten foreign policy decision — comes along there is a collective yawn.

That’s what has occurred with national security aide Ben Rhodes, who, dripping with contempt for those he deceived, told the New York Times magazine that the administration constructed a phony timeline so as to con Americans into believing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was the result of  “moderate” Hassan Rouhani’s election. Rhodes did so by creating an “echo chamber” of willing journalists who essentially took dictation from the administration.

As Lee Smith put it, “For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe—they are.” READ MORE