Romney Would Have Killed Osama Bin Laden Too, BTW

Impact

Tuesday is the one year anniversary of SEAL Team Six taking out Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden. One year ago, President Barack Obama stated that, “We don’t need to spike the football” in triumph after scoring a touchdown.

Apparently, Obama was saving it for an election year.

Reminding everybody of what happened last year to score election points is one thing. But to claim that your election opponent wouldn’t have made the same call to kill the head terrorist responsible for the 9/11 attacks looks weak, desperate, and downright classless. Instead of using this opportunity to focus on the apolitical decision to eliminate a heartless monster and finally give the families of 9/11 victims some peace and closure, the Obama administration has to even selfishly politicize this moment for political gain.

The Obama 2012 campaign has a new ad, narrated by former President Bill Clinton, hinting that former Gov. Mitt Romney would not have made the decision to go after bin Laden:

But Obama didn’t stop there. During a press conference at the White House yesterday with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Obama just couldn’t resist using an opportunity hosting a foreign dignitary to make another cheap 2012 election pitch against Romney:

Even Vice President Joe Biden, who called Obama “naïve” in 2007 for thinking we could take such bold action to kill bin Laden and still had reservations going into the operation last year, is pointing his finger at Romney on the campaign trail and accusing him of speaking Biden’s same words.

The quote the Obama campaign is using came from an April 2007 interview with the Associated Press. Romney said in that interview he backs a broad strategy to defeat Islamic jihadists and that it's “not worth moving heaven and earth” for one person because you don’t want to publicize to the world when you’re conducting a covert operation. And Obama must’ve agreed because that’s exactly what he did when he executed the operation that weekend last year, not even telling the Pakistani government about it until after it was over.

In fact, at an MSNBC debate in May of 2007, when Romney was asked about the comments he made in the AP interview, he responded, “Of course we get Osama Bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America.” Asked if that meant moving heaven and earth, Romney said, “We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person. ... It’s more than Osama bin Laden. But he is going to pay, and he will die.”

So the Obama campaign must think the American public is either too lazy to do our own research and will believe anything we hear or that we must be too stupid to know what Romney meant.

Romney has called for increasing defense spending, fulfilling America’s promise to construct the BMD system in Eastern Europe, using military force if necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and criticized Obama’s apologetic foreign policy. In other words, Romney’s a foreign policy hawk, and now I’m supposed to believe that he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on taking out bin Laden?

As Romney put it, “Even Jimmy Carter would’ve given that order.”

Weak, Mr. President. Really weak. It makes you look desperate and that you’ll say whatever it takes to win. Americans aren’t buying it.

And before you continue your end zone dance while claiming your American teammate wouldn’t have run in the same direction had he caught the ball, you may want to check out whom most Americans actually give the most credit for the success of the operation. In a Gallup poll conducted the day after it happened, 89% of Americans credited the U.S. military “a great deal” for finding and killing bin Laden, 62% felt the CIA deserved as much credit, and you, Mr. President, came in third at 35%.

You unveiled your 2012 slogan yesterday: “Forward.” Yet your campaign is looking behind in the past and trying to find any sound byte you can to spin out of context. Do you really want to play that game and go over all the campaign promises you made and policies you enacted that didn’t turn out so well?