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In the Obama White House, officials say what they mean and mean what they say….. until they don’t.
White House national security advisor Ben Rhodes went on CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront last night to defend the new Iran nuclear deal, during which he claimed the Obama administration never wanted anytime, anywhere inspections in Iran.
“I understand you’re saying they can go 24/7, but there is a process, right?” host Erin Burnett asked. “You can’t just say, ‘we’re suspicious of this site, we’re walking in tomorrow, walking in an hour.’ It’s not that anytime, anywhere.”
In his response, Rhodes pushed back against the “anytime, anywhere” comment. “We never sought in this negotiation the capacity for so-called anytime, anywhere where you could basically go anywhere in the country, look at whatever you wanted to do, even if it had nothing to do with the nuclear program.”
… The problem is, Rhodes has been very, very clear in the past that the administration’s stance was that the United States expected so-called “anytime, anywhere” access.
There are at least 2 television interviews in which Rhodes was caught on tape declaring that the Administration was pushing for “anytime, anywhere” inspections. So either Rhodes is clueless, or he is lying.
This is typical for the Obama Administration’s culture of campaign-style governing, where staff will say or do anything to rally support for their policy agenda and hope that nobody will hold them accountable after the fact. In the White House they may call this “spinning the media narrative,” but in the rest of America, we call this a flat out lie.
