The Mitt Romney campaign questions why President Obama has not uttered the word “terrorism” to describe the assault Sept. 11 on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Matthew Olsen, the director of National Counterterrorism Center, have described the incident as a terrorist attack. White House spokesman Jay Carney, who previously called the incident a terror attack, said aboard Air Force One on Wednesday that the president also held the view that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.
“Our position is, as reflected by the NCTC director, that it was a terrorist attack,” Carney said of the incident that left Amb. Chris Stevens and three other U.S. government personnel dead. “It is, I think by definition, a terrorist attack when there is a prolonged assault on an embassy with weapons.”
And at his address before the United Nations General Assembly,Obama strongly condemned the attack, calling the incident “an assault on the very ideals upon which the United Nations was founded.” The president also vowed the United States would “be relentless in tracking down the killers and bringing them to justice.”
But Romney aides, as well as Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, charged earlier today that it’s unsettling that Obama hasn’t described the incident in the same language as his advisers have.
“It is troubling that President Obama refuses to call the Libya attacks on the anniversary of 9/11 an act of terror,” Priebus said. “For weeks President Obama and his administration have failed to acknowledge the facts behind the Libya attack. It’s time for the president to have an honest conversation with Americans, quit apologizing for America and show some leadership.”
The new attack by Romney’s team on Obama’s rhetoric is no doubt, in part, an effort to cut into the advantage president holds over Romney on foreign policy and national security issues . Throughout the campaign, Obama’s surrogates have noted during his watch, the war in Iraq was ended, Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden and the U.S. has decimated al Qaeda’s leadership.
Voters in six battleground states, including the big prizes of Florida and Ohio, say they think Obama would do a better job on national security issues than Romney, according to a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll published today.
But Republicans argue that the criticism of the president’s rhetoric is substantive. The Daily Beast, citing anonymous intelligence officials, published a report on Wednesday that American intelligence agencies had information within 24 hours of the incident that showed Al Qaeda was involved in the attack.
“There are serious questions that have arisen, it seems that either they didn’t understand the magnitude of the
attack or they are deliberately downplaying the attack to protect the president,” says RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon and seven other GOP lawmakers wrote to Obama on Wednesday requesting more information about the incident and also criticizing some administration officials initial comments about the attack.
“We are seeking additional information regarding the intelligence leading up to the attack, the security posture of our embassy, the role former Guantanamo Bay detainees may have played, as well as the way forward in Libya and, indeed, the region,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “We are also disturbed by the public statements made by members of the Administration that would lead the American public to believe this attack was a protest gone wrong, rather than what it truly was â?? a terrorist attack on the United States on the anniversary of 9/11.”
Carney said that the broader questions about the incident are still being investigated by the FBI and the Accountability Review Board established by Clinton.
The Romney camp also notes that in an interview with ABC’s The View that aired Tuesday, Obama did not use the T-word to describe the incident when asked about it by the talk show co-host Joy Behar.
BEHAR: It was reported that people just went crazy and wild because of this anti-Muslim movie, or anti-Muhammad, I guess, movie. But then I heard Hillary Clinton say that it was an act of terrorism. Is it? What do you say?
OBAMA: Well, we’re still doing an investigation. There’s no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. Now, we don’t have all the information yet, so we’re still gathering it. But what’s clear is that around the world, there’s still a lot of threats out there. That’s why we have to maintain the strongest military in the world, that’s why we can’t let down our guard when it comes to the intelligence work that we do and staying on top of — not just al Qaeda, the traditional al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistanâ?
(USA Today)
