Romney lies about Obama's Libya response. Unfit to be president.

If there ever was any doubt that Mitt Romney is unfit to lead this nation, his ham-handed, lying, insensitive attempt to discredit Obama's response to the attacks on our consulates in Libya and Egypt proves it. 

The gunfire at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had barely ceased when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney seriously mischaracterized what had happened in a statement accusing President Barack Obama of "disgraceful" handling of violence there and at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

"The Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks," Romney said in a statement first emailed to reporters at 10:09 p.m. Eastern time, under the condition it not be published until midnight.

In fact, neither a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo earlier in the day nor a later statement from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered sympathy for attackers. The statement from the Cairo Embassy had condemned anti-Muslim religious incitement before the embassy walls were breached. In her statement, issued minutes before Romney's, Clinton had offered the administration's first response to the violence in Libya, explicitly condemning the attack there and confirming the death of a State Department official.

"I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today," Clinton said in a written statement received by The Associated Press at 10:08 p.m. "As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss."

Republican Peggy Noonan said:

When you step forward in the midst of a political environment and start giving statements on something dramatic and violent that has happened, you're always leaving yourself open to accusations that you are trying to exploit things politically.

For sure. It's a fact, not an accusation, that Romney shot his mouth off without aiming first in an attempt to resurrect his faltering presidential campaign.

He criticized Obama for his "disgraceful" handling of violence at the consulates even though Obama hadn't done anything by the time Romney issued his statement, and, as noted above, the statement from the Cairo Embassy also was issued before protesters entered the grounds.

Romney has shown why he would be a horrible commander-in-chief.

He doesn't care about facts; he makes judgments impulsively without understanding the situation "on the ground"; he is focused on trying to score political points rather than doing what is best for the country and those who serve it.

Romney just dug himself an even deeper campaign hole and threw himself headfirst into it. TIME's Mark Halperin pithily wrote: 

Unless the Romney campaign has gamed this crisis out in some manner completely invisible to the Gang of 500, his doubling down on criticism of the President for the statement coming out of Cairo is likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign.

Comments

[Frank Haynes]

WOW, your account is 180 degrees from how I heard it! I guess I am going to have to stop listening to FOX NEWS?

[DGarr]

Mr. Romney has done more than demonstrate his ineptitude in foreign policy matters.

He has demonstrated that he is easily panicked.

And that he is willing to put his political campaign ahead of national interest.

Mr. Romney is not qualified to be president of the United States.

[Brian Hines]

Frank, absolutely. Stop watching Fox News now! Don't wait. Your brain is too important to waste. NBC (Chuck Todd) has a good rundown of what happened, along with many other REPUTABLE news sources. See:
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/12/13827378-first-thoughts-over-the-top?lite

Excerpt:
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Yesterday we noted that Mitt Romney, down in the polls after the convention, was throwing the kitchen sink at President Obama. Little did we know the kitchen sink would include -- on the anniversary of 9/11 -- one of the most over-the-top and (it turns out) incorrect attacks of the general-election campaign.

Last night after 10:00 pm ET, Romney released a statement on the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya. After saying he was “outraged” by these attacks and the death of an American consulate worker, Romney said, “It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

Yet after learning every piece of new information about those attacks, the Romney statement looks worse and worse -- and simply off-key. First, Romney was referring to a statement that the U.S. embassy in Egypt issued condemning the “efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.”

But that embassy statement, which the White House has distanced itself from, was in reference to an anti-Islam movie and anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones, and it came out BEFORE the embassy attacks began.

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

Perhaps Romney is seeking the Presidency because: "This is not mere class warfare. That’s just a tactic. The goal, as it always has been for his kind throughout history, is to accumulate POWER that he can wield without accountability or checks and balances."
(Cited from remarks that were applied to another candidate.)

Or: maybe this citation is merely an unfair and/or abusive characterization which bears no merit.

(Sorry, I cannot "will" to do other than consider and present this posted remark.)

Robert Paul Howard

[Sunny]

You all have egg on your faces now! Turns out Obama and the MSM are the liars. Wake up and smell the Obama stink or before you know it this country won't exist

[Brian Hines]

Hey, Sunny, you forgot to cite evidence about what Obama and the mainstream media lied about. Guess you're the liar.

I repeat the truth: Romney was caught in a lie about Obama excusing the attackers. When Romney said that, the attacks in Libya and Egypt hadn't even happened, and Obama, nor the administration, ever excused the attackers.

Get your facts straight before you post another falsehood on this blog.