Yet More Shameless Attacks on Susan Rice

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Here’s a shocker. Susan Rice, in a meeting with John McCain and the rest of the Senate’s Benghazi brigade today, acknowledged that her initial description of the attacks had been mistaken. This netted her….exactly nothing:

Ms. Rice’s acknowledgment, in a meeting on Capitol Hill with three Republican senators who had sharply criticized her earlier statements in a series of televsion interviews after the attack, seemed to do little to quell their anger. The senators emerged from the meeting voicing even deeper reservations about Ms. Rice’s role in the messy aftermath of the Benghazi attack, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans.

“We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got, and some that we didn’t get,” Senator John McCain of Arizona said to reporters. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, “Bottom line: I’m more concerned than I was before” — a sentiment echoed by Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

These people are just shameless. By this point, they know perfectly well that Rice never said anything deliberately misleading. On September 15 she passed along the unclassified assessment of the intelligence community as of September 15, and that’s it. But they just can’t stand to admit that they were wrong. It’s like watching a bunch of preening teenagers facing off in the schoolyard. It’s all just a big game to them.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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