ABC News

Below are some of the notable comments made Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Guests included U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice; ABC News global affairs anchor Christiane Amanpour; ABC News senior foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz; ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross; ABC News' George Will; Fox News contributor and former State Department official Liz Cheney, co-founder of Keep America Safe; Ret. General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe; PBS' "Washington Week" moderator and managing editor Gwen Ifill; and ABC News senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Ambassador Susan Rice

Violence in Benghazi, Libya:

RICE: In fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous - not a premeditated - response to what had transpired in Cairo… And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.

RICE: The counter-demonstrations, the outpouring of sympathy and support for Ambassador Stevens and for the United States, the government of Libya and - and the people on the street saying how pained they are by this, is much more a reflection of the sentiment towards the United States than a small handful of heavily armed mobsters.

Relations with Muslim world:

RICE: We're not impotent. We're not even less popular, to challenge that assessment… It's quite the opposite of being impotent. We have worked with the governments in Egypt. President Obama picked up the phone and talked to President Morsi in Egypt. And as soon as he did that, the security provided to our personnel in our embassies dramatically increased.

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TAPPER: Why would President Obama say Egypt is not an ally?

RICE: The president has been very clear and everybody understands that Egypt is a very critical partner of the United States, has long been so. That relationship remains the same, and the president wasn't signaling any change in the nature of our relationship.

ROUNDTABLE

Response to protests:

AMANPOUR: They're very, very concerned that this should not disrupt their relations with the United States, whether it's the Egyptian prime minister who told me that, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Libyan prime minister.

Homeland threats:

ROSS: There's concern, but those bomb threats washed out as a real threat. But in general, they see no organized plan to disrupt or to attack in this country, but there are the independent operators who could be inspired.

Overseas security:

RADDATZ: In Yemen particularly, that embassy is very, very hard to breach. You have the host nation usually on the outer perimeter in charge of security there. But getting inside, you usually have Americans there backing them up, whether they're contractors or security.

Anti-Islam film:

ROSS: He was trying to stir things up with his false claims that he was an Israeli Jew, I think, with this very provocative film.

AMANPOUR: It was clearly a film designed to incite. And it's a film designed by an extremist with extremist views here that plays right into the extremist provocateurs over there.

U.S. Naval exercises:

RADDATZ: It's pretty obvious the message to Iran is: Don't even try to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. They've got all these mine-sweeping exercises. It is an enormous exercise.

Fallout from protests:

CHENEY: I think that in a situation in which an embassy has been attacked, the flag's been ripped down, the Al Qaeda flag has been flown, that America's president not to even mention it clearly sends a signal to radicals across the region.

KARL: Now the Arab world is to a degree inflamed with - with very visible anti-Americanism. That's the kind of thing that could potentially erode the president's numbers long-term, even though Mitt Romney severely mishandled the situation.

WILL: I really do not think it's fair to fault the president for throwing Israel under the bus.

IFILL: It's the disorganized state violence, I think, or non-state violence that everyone's worried about when they look at a map and see protests in 20 different places.

CLARK: No president can publicly declare red lines. That surrenders his decision-making authority.

Federal Reserve's quantitative easing:

WILL: Quantitative easing is how the government talks when it's really eager not to be understood.

IFILL: It's going to create the idea that something is being done, not necessarily something that will have an immediate effect.

CHENEY: What this is, is the Fed printing money in order to pay for Barack Obama's debt.

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