The Republican crusade against Susan Rice, US ambassador to the United Nations, continues unabated. Dr Rice, a favourite to succeed outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is charged by some Republicans with "lying" about the nature of the attacks against the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on 11 September 2012.

While Rice should be thoroughly vetted by the Senate, the logic of current witch hunt is laughable; and it sets a precedent the GOP should want to avoid. Following the logic of Senator John McCain, the Obama administration should launch an investigation into the George W Bush administration.

According to Republicans, Rice committed one of two sins. First, she deliberately lied about the attacks, calling them spontaneous, when they were, in fact, premeditated. The lesser evil is that she hewed too close to her talking points. Because she is in the "inner ring" of the Obama administration, Rice supposedly should have known that the talking points were rubbish and refuted the analysis of the US intelligence community upon which they were based.

What incentive Rice had to purposely lie, and why she should have second-guessed intelligence at the time, are unclear.

Rice said on the Sunday morning political talk shows that the Obama administration believed that "opportunistic" elements had hijacked "spontaneous protests" to launch the attacks. She stressed that this was "best information" available and that the matter was under investigation. It seems pretty clear that she was open to the possibility the narrative might change as the investigation proceeded.

We now know that the attacks were part of a planned plot, but at the time, the picture was not so clear. This is nothing new. Policy-makers and the intelligence community are not omnipotent. They are managing multiple issues, with finite resources. Events occurring half-way around the world are not going to be instantly detailed as, and immediately after, they occur.

One could seek to blame the intelligence community for supposedly faulty intelligence, upon which the talking points were based, but that would be disingenuous. Just like Susan Rice, the intelligence officers were relying what they knew at the time as the situation unfolded. Even if intelligence was guarded, there may have been good reasons for such caution.

An investigation might be in order, but this can be conducted through standing Senate committees – not a special commission or the crucifixion of Rice. This is not to excuse failures, but when the issue is not whether failures led to a specific action, but rather about the administration's attempt to provide the public with as much information as possible, the current trial of Susan Rice is completely blown out of perspective.

Consider the tale of the other Dr Rice, Condoleezza Rice.

The Bush administration failed to anticipate the 9/11 attacks, despite the fact that the outgoing Clinton administration warned them of the threat and left a great big file on the desk of the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Rice justified the oversight to the 9/11 Commission because, despite intelligence indicating an attack, there was nothing concrete: the intercepts did not say who, they did not say when, they did not say how. So the administration did next to nothing. The Bush administration and Condoleezza Rice, as national security adviser, were let off the hook by the 9/11 Commission.

Rice was eventually named secretary of state despite the fact that the oversight of the Bush administration cost 3,000 American lives on 9/11, not four as at Benghazi. Still, Joe Biden and Barack Obama voted to confirm her as secretary of state along with 28 other Democrats. At that time, Senator McCain warned against letting a rancid debate over confirmation of the new secretary get in the way of a foregone conclusion. He seems to have had a change of heart.

The story does not end there, of course.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration then went on the craft a narrative, supposedly based on intelligence, justifying a war against Iraq that cost the United States over $1tn, with nearly 5,000 dead soldiers and 120,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths. Colin Powell went to the United Nations on 5 February 2003 and spoke at length about the threat of mobile biological weapons labs. Powell's aide Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson called the speech one of the lowest moments of his life, recounting that "(Powell) came through the door … and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson told CNN in 2005. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose." The source used to legitimate much of the testimony had previously been flagged as a "liar" by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Condoleezza Rice also vouched for the "clearness" of the intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq on numerous occasions, including a 2011 NPR interview where she said: "The intelligence was as clear as any intelligence I've ever seen and I've been in this business a long time … When you had intelligence assessments that said Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his biological and chemical weapons and could reconstitute his nuclear weapon in a year if he got foreign assistance – by the end of the decade if he didn't – I've actually never seen clearer indications than that." Rice went on to say: "The problem is, the intelligence wasn't right."

Perhaps Dr Rice can be forgiven, since CIA Director George Tenet called the pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons program a "slam dunk". Maybe, the blame lies entirely with the intelligence community. But George Tenet argued on CBS News' 60 Minutes program in 2007 that he never claimed that it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The former CIA director was frustrated, he said, "listening to this for almost three years, listening to the vice-president go on Meet the Press on the fifth year [anniversary] of 9/11 and say, 'Well, George Tenet said slam dunk' – as if he needed me to say 'slam dunk' to go to war with Iraq."

The basis for the 2003 war is still far from transparent and the use or misuse of intelligence by administration principals is anything but clear. Based on what we know, Bush policy-makers either ate what they were spoonfed by the CIA or they flatout lied. Either way, since this is the charge Senator McCain makes against Susan Rice, Democrats should offer to look into the matter more.

Somehow, I doubt the Republicans will be so willing to press their case against Ambassador Rice if the President offers to take their increased interest in transparency in earnest. That is too bad, since someone should answer for the national tragedy that was Iraq.