Mitt Romney has again showed that he will say anything for political gain, regardless of the facts and regardless of whether the argument makes any sense. Romney and other Republicans have been attacking Obama for not having enough security at the Libyan embassy despite the fact that it has been the Republicans who have cut funding for such security.
Testimony before a House Committee today contradicted the Republican claims according to The Hill:
A key witness at a House hearing Wednesday disputed Republican assertions that more security measures would have prevented the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three others at a U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“The ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing that we had seen in Libya, or that I had seen in my time in the Diplomatic Security Service,” said Eric Nordstrom, a regional security officer who had previously been stationed in Tripoli.
“Having an extra foot of wall, or an extra-half dozen guards or agents would not have enabled us to respond to that kind of assault,” Nordstrom said at Wednesday’s hearing.
The report also pointed out how it has been the Republicans who have cut spending for security:
“The fact is that, since 2011, the House has cut embassy security by hundreds of millions of dollars below the amounts requested by the president,” Rep Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, said in an opening statement. “The Senate restored some of these funds, but the final amounts were still far below the administration’s requests. And they were far below the levels we enacted in 2010.”
According to a Democratic staff memo obtained by The Hill, the House cut the two State Department accounts for “Worldwide Security Protection” and “Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance” by a total of $459 million in 2011 and 2012, below the Obama administration’s funding request. The Democrat-controlled Senate was able to reinstate $88.25 million — still $370.7 million lower than what the administration wanted.
Even if there was some truth to the Republican attacks, it is hard to see this as justification for returning Republicans to power. If failure to be prepared for a terrorist attack is the criteria, by this logic we should never vote for a Republican again after the manner in which the Bush administration failed to respond to a far more serious situation, ignoring warnings before the 9/11 attack.
The mother of a Navy Seal killed in the violence is also upset with Mitt Romney’s dishonesty for using her son for political gain:
“I don’t trust Romney. He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda. It’s wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama,” said Barbara Doherty, Glen’s mother.