Susan Rice was a little less ubiquitous this time around than during her infamous five-talk-show world tour repeating the lie that the Benghazi terrorist attack was the fault of an inflammatory video and not due to the criminal negligence of President Barack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. But there she was again on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Comedy Hour” defending her former boss, this time against charges that President Trump cleaned up more of Obama’s Iran mess by terminating the life and reign of terror of Iranian Gen. and Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani:

The Obama administration wasn’t presented with the opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad early Friday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said Friday night. “Had we been presented such an opportunity, what we would have done is weigh very carefully and very deliberately the risks versus the potential rewards,” Rice told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow…. Rice questioned whether Trump made the right decision. “So, if in fact the administration can be believed that there was indeed strong intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States that’s being carried out by Soleimani and related militia then the question becomes [was] there more than one way to address that threat?” she told Maddow. “Was the only way to deal with it to kill Soleimani? Certainly, given his history and track record, he deserves his just rewards but the question is does that serve our interests? Does that make us more secure?”

Uh, yes it does, Susan. The Trump administration is certainly more believable than you and the Obama administration was in explaining why four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi, including Amb. Christopher Stevens. Because Trump killed Soleimani, the American embassy did not turn into another Obama-Clinton-Rice Benghazi tragedy.

The “reward” is that Soleimani can no longer ply his murderous trade and the families of the 600-plus Americans killed by his explosively-formed-penetrators can take some solace in his occupation of a special place in Hell. Those maimed by this butcher can take heart in that not enough pieces of him were found to have an open casket. And what were the risks? That those shouting “Death to America!” might try to kill us?

According to a 2018 report in the Daily Beast, Obama launched 186 drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan during just his first two years in office. If he wanted to, he could have found and killed him. He killed Osama bin Laden, and took credit for it, even though the legwork was done by the preceding Bush administration. Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was president, not because he was president

Obama didn’t want to kill Soleimani. He wanted the nuclear deal sellout with Iran, and killing Iran’s Quds Force commanding general would not have advance the deal. Better for Obama to release $150 billion to the Iranians and fly in some $1.8 billion in cash and drop it on an Iranian tarmac in the middle of the night. Quid pro quo, anyone? Obama not only didn’t pursue Soleimani as a matter of policy, he provided Soleimani and Iran with a terrorist-and-weapons slush fund to play with.

The Obama administration actually killed a chance to get Soleimani in a move unbelievably callous and self-serving. As TownHall reports:

According to a January 2018 report from the Israel newspaper Haaretz, leaders in Israel were prepared to kill Soleimani back in 2015 but the Obama administration put an end to the plan. Just as Israel was "on the verge" of killing Soleimani, the Obama administration alerted Iranian officials about Israel's plans and their close tracking of the military leader…. It really isn't that surprising to learn that the Obama administration intervened to keep Soleimani alive. President Barack Obama never stood by Israel even though the country is considered the United States' greatest ally in the Middle East. Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media noted an important tidbit about the revelation: "Yet the news that the Obama's administration prevented Israel from assassinating the Quds Force leader seems particularly significant, since the Obama administration also kept a list of approximately 500 American soldiers who were murdered by Iranian IEDs. Since the Quds Force spearheads Iran's operations outside the Islamic Republic, Soleimani would arguably be responsible for all of those deaths."

And Obama didn’t care and neither did a Susan Rice fresh from covering up the administration’s criminal negligence at Benghazi. Sometimes it pays to read the fine print. They wanted Soleimani to live long and prosper for that was a price that had to be paid to get the Iran nuclear deal:

Former President Barack Obama granted amnesty to Iranian terrorist Gen. Qassem Soleimani as part of the "historic" 2015 Iran Deal. The Obama Administration removed Soleimani from a list of Iranian outlaws, along with other leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, according to a 2015 article in The Telegraph…. Found buried on page 86 of the annex of President Obama’s “historic” deal with Iran, Soleimani was granted amnesty and was taken off the list of proscribed Iranians -- together with a number of senior members of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards. In addition to giving in to the Iranian regime with the agreement granted in 2015, Obama continued to help it, trying to gain access to the United States financial system, thus circumventing the continuing sanctions on the country. According to a June 7, 2018 report by the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), "Obama administration secretly granted a specific license authorizing the conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system." the transactions did not take place because the U.S. banks refused to complete the requests, preferring to respect the law.

Well, at least someone did. Barack Hussein Obama had the opportunity, if he wanted to, to kill Soleimani. Instead, he protected Soleimani and sought to provide him and Iran the means and opportunity to kill Americans and make “Death to America” a chilling reality.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.