U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice has been taking a lot of hits lately over some remarks she made in September.

I’ve been trying now for weeks to figure out why her remarks may be endangering her possible appointment as secretary of state. I’m still a bit bumfuzzled by it.

The U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya came under attack on Sept. 11. Four people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya – Christopher Stevens – died as a result. The next day, Rice made several news talk show appearances in which she made incorrect statements about what provoked the attack. She also declared that al-Qaida has been “decimated” as a result of the U.S. war on terror effort, launched after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Her critics now contend that Rice deliberately fabricated the cause of the incident in Benghazi – she labeled it a spontaneous response to a ghastly anti-Islam film released in the United States – to make President Obama look good, as he was in the middle of his re-election campaign.

Now, the critics say, she’s not qualified to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in the event Obama nominates her. Rice has been considered the next potential top diplomat.

Why the furor? Her critics say she should be held to a higher standard than what she delivered in the chaos that followed the Benghazi attack, which now appears to have been a premeditated event staged by terrorists.

I guess my biggest question is why the administration trotted the U.N. ambassador out when she had little direct knowledge of what happened the previous day. Why not ask the CIA boss, David Petraeus, or Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or the national security adviser to make the rounds?

As for whether Susan Rice is now dead meat as the next secretary of state, I wonder whether her sparkling credentials – renowned international scholar and Rhodes Scholar – now are rendered moot because of this misstep. I think not.

I’m reminded of what then-Vice President George H.W. Bush told former CBS newsman Dan Rather during a heated exchange between the two when Bush was running for president in 1988. Rather, you’ll remember, once walked off the news set in a huff over a programming malfunction. Bush, after several minutes of angry jousting with Rather over the vice president’s role in the Iran-contra affair during the Reagan administration, asked: “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you when you walked off the set in New York?”

That was a fair question to ask back then. It is fair to ask it now of Susan Rice.