ABC: President Obama last night on 60 minutes the president referred to the situation in middle east as one of those bumps in the road the country will go through…he will also not have time to meet with some of those leaders while in NY — but will be on the view…how do you square with that?

Mitt Romney: Well I think the president’s comments on 60 minutes last night were quite revealing. His indication that developments in the middle east represent bumps in the road is a very different view than I have. The president, uh, I can’t imagine saying something like the assassination of ambassadors is a bump in the road, when you look at the entire context, The assassination, the Muslim brotherhood president being elected in Egypt, 20,000 people killed in Syria, Iran close to becoming a nuclear nation these are far from being bumps in the road. They represent events that are spinning out of the kind of influence we’d like to have. We’re at the mercy events rather than shaping the events in the Middle East. and the president doesn’t have time to actually spend time with leaders of these nations particularly Bibi Netanyahu, I find that very troubling. And a suggestion that the course America is on is not the right course in the middle east. And of course also on 60 Minutes he laid out his economic agenda saying things are going just fine. Tell that to the 23 million people who are struggling to find a good job or to the people who have no job or having a hard time making ends meet. This is a tough time for the country and the status quo is not going to cut it.

From my perspective, the scandal here is that the State Department had such inadequate security procedures in place that four Americans were killed. And then the Ambassador’s diary–and who knows what else–was left behind for anyone to pick up. Thankfully, it was CNN–and not Al Qaeda or some other militia–that found it and was able to return it to the family. That CNN used portions of the material in the diary they found at the scene–material that appears to contradict the official version of events that State/WH has been putting out–is completely in line with practices of good journalism…

The misinformation here seems largely to be coming from State and the administration. The defense that the administration has offered that there was no intelligence warning of an attack is weak. If there was no intel, then clearly the CIA and other intel agents stationed in Benghazi weren’t doing their jobs well. If there was intel, then we have some kind of cover-up–whether out of incompetence or ass covering before the election or just the trauma of losing four good men, it’s hard for me to say at this point.


A leading House Republican criticized the Obama administration Sunday for running ads in Pakistan denouncing the anti-Islamic film that allegedly sparked violent and deadly protests across the Middle East and North Africa, calling the roughly $70,000 project a “horrible idea.”

“I think it was a horrible idea,” said Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “It gave credibility and it gave a permission slip to Al Qaeda, to Pakistani officials.”…

Rogers also argued that Pakistan Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour personally offering $100,000 for the death of the person who produced the film is further proof the administration made a mistake by running the ads.

“This is a minister of the government of Pakistan,” Rogers said. “As you have seen, it hasn’t been effective.”

What has been especially galling about Secretary of Clinton’s chronic hedging, and the apologies aired on Pakistani television, are—other than the abject fear of Islamists— two salient facts. One, the Middle East — not its individuals, but its official government-sponsored and subsidized television, radio, press, and film — routinely demonizes and defames Christians, Jews, and Americans in the worst sort of way. Let us be spared from the sanctimonious boilerplate, for example, from a Prime Minister Erdogan, who has presided over a surge of Turkish anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-American television shows and popular films, many of them with the de facto aid of the Turkish government.

Apparently leaders of the Islamic world present a non-negotiable demand to the West that they be given a blank check for their governments to defame Jews, Christians, and Americans, but the United States must condemn any private individual who, quite apart from the knowledge of the U.S. government, does the same to Muslims. That is the issue, and anything less than an unapologetic defense of free speech is not only a betrayal of our Constitution, but a very dangerous concession that will only incite more violence in the near future. Unfortunately, Western hedging, appeasement, and apologies to theocrats and authoritarians have never won gratitude, but instead such magnanimity is seen as either weakness to be exploited or proof all along that the apologizer admits culpability and will do so again in the future — a fact well known to history’s thugs, big and small, whether Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama bin Laden, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything, to some degree,” he said on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

President Obama arrived in New York Monday afternoon for the United Nations General Assembly. One of the main topics of discussion at this annual meeting will be the recent unrest outside U.S. embassies in the Muslim world, including an attack in Benghazi, Libya, which claimed the lives of four Americans. But unlike years past, the president will not be sitting down with any of the more than 120 world leaders who are here in New York.

Simply put, the White House is prioritizing the president’s reelection effort.

Via RCP.