As Mitt Romney prepares to milk the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and Ambassador Chris Stevens’s death for his own political advantage, it’s important to remember why he is doing so.
Mitt Romney, like George W. Bush, didn’t really care about tracking down bin Laden. “I don’t think its worth moving heaven and earth to find one person,” he said — back in 2007.
It wasn’t until after President Obama found him, killed him, and dumped his ass into the ocean that Romney realized that Obama’s success in that regard might pose a problem for him. So now, of course, Romney needs to turn the success into a failure while at the same time trying to take credit for it. It’s classic RomneyShambles.
The concerted effort by Republicans (with a healthy assist from Sean Hannity and the rest of GOP Fox News) to turn Obama’s foreign policy success into a policy failure has been going on for quite some time now. One idiot at Forbes Magazine, outright claimed that killing Osama bin Laden was a foreign policy failure because we should have held him for questioning so that we could take down all of al Qaeda, or some such nonsense.
Sean Hannity claimed that the fact that Obama killed bin Laden meant that Obama wished deep down in his heart that bin Laden were still alive. (He seriously said that!)
And, of course, Mitt Romney has already pretended not to have said what he knows damn well he said about not giving a crap about catching the dude.
So to recap, here’s what Romney: Classic said back in 2007.
[read full post at ABLC]
Davis X. Machina
To be fair, that’s bi-partisan nonsense…
Patricia Kayden
Wow. Can anyone imagine a Romney Presidency? The man changes positions like I change underwear. Hopefully the Obama campaign will pounce on his multiple personalities and make some hard hitting ads.
Scott S.
@Patricia Kayden: Well, if he got elected, he’d probably go ahead and settle on a single policy — infinite tax breaks for the mega-rich, vastly increased taxes for the middle class and poor, shutting down everything in the government but the military and his own salary, and letting the Bushites fuck up foreign policy again…
Soonergrunt
Oh, Romney flopped a different direction that turns out to be just like the President’s direction when you get down to it. Left to Rmoney spokesbot on Andrea Mitchell to avoid explaining the difference or lack thereof.
Color me COMPLETELY FUCKING SURPRISED.
On a personal note, got new drug from doctor. The culture came back and the original antibiotic was wrong type. Also have cough medicine that’s labeled “take 1TSP. May cause drowsiness.” It SHOULD say “take 1TSP. Plant your ass cause you’re not going anywhere.” Knocked cold out for 2hrs.
Capt. Seaweed
When Seal Team 6 punched Osama’s ticket the Republicans lost the biggest hammer in their fear toolbox. Now, little children all across the land are sleeping soundly at night because they know OBL isn’t hiding under the bed. And, for the most part, they know who’s responsible for that.
Soonergrunt
@Capt. Seaweed:
I will go to my grave convinced that they intentionally let him escape at Tora Bora because they needed a bogeyman more than they needed to protect the American people.
Soonergrunt
@Soonergrunt: And to clarify, I don’t think that it was Bush that made that call. I think it was Cheney and Rumsfeld.
blingee
Classic ABL Vista Home Edition SP1. Become an unknowing participant in the right wing echo chamber by repeating their lies. She still doesn’t get it and never will.
Maybe if I put it in simpler terms some of you numb skulls will understand. If you are playing defense you already lost the debate.
japa21
@Soonergrunt: And I agree with you. I don’t give Bush the credit of wanting to be that hands on in the decision making.
Capt. Seaweed
@Soonergrunt:
I am not by nature a conspiracy nut, but you and I are very much in agreement here. When Bush stated, a couple years into the hunt, that catching The Ghost was no longer a priority that sealed the deal for me. Better alive than dead.
Dale Heiber
Obama went after/got Bin Laden. Romney going after Big Bird. I compare; you decide…
El Cid
You keep saying I said that. That is clearly not what I was saying, I don’t know how many times I have to keep refuting that, and it’s not my view on the matter. My view is that it took far too long to get bin Laden and this sort of slow-motion failure is what I would avoid through the kind of hard-working executive leadership we truly need.
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: There have been several in the military who have said they knew exactly where he was in Tora Bora and then got the inexplicable order to pull back. No explanation was ever given for that.
Southern Beale
LOL. Just looked at this Mike Lukovich cartoon which seems quite appropriate to your post.
Mitt is doubling down on the wingnut today, so I guess Moderate Mitt just gets trotted out for national debates. That’s a really weird strategy.
WereBear
Me too.
Soonergrunt
@Capt. Seaweed: I am not a conspiracy nut either. The universe is perverse and uncaring enough on its own and far more effective, but
@Yutsano: is exactly right. I’ve heard exact same thing from too many different quarters on that.
SteveinSC
@Patricia Kayden:
“Well, we create a reality and you debate the reality and while you are debating that reality, we create a new reality.” Where, Oh where have I heard that before? Oh yes, bush’s neocon-AIPAC warmongers.
Kane
Sure, a Romney presidency would be a disaster at home and abroad, but our enemies would think twice about challenging him to a debate.
Citizen_X
@Southern Beale: The Nick Anderson cartoon that ABL’s got at the original post is even more to the point.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Shouldn’t that be “Romney ME” rather than “Romne: Classic”?
catclub
@Southern Beale: Well, all the people at his rallies are wingnuts, and want to hear the crazy.
As long as not too much crazy gets on national news, it is all good.
I think Romney has been pretty smart to just lie. It is his strongest suit.
cmorenc
@Soonergrunt:
I will give Bush just a smidgen of credit for finally realizing way too little, too late, just how badly he’d been ill-served, abused, and misled first by Rumsfeld and finally (much later on) by Cheney. It’s clear that during the last year of Bush’s Presidency, he’d finally (about time) stopped trusting Cheney’s input. Of course, by then the enormous damage was already done to this country by these two ass-clowns, and during the first term of his Presidency, Bush was a fully willing on-board enabler for allowing these two to seize near-complete control over foreign policy, especially over the conduct of the wars. They played Bush’s resentments over the relationship between Saddam Hussein and his father like a fiddle.
Villago Delenda Est
The stupid, and the desperation, of the vile fascist shit BURNS!
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
Not to get too personal here and understand this is a rhetorical question but:
You change your underwear a minimum of 8-10 times a day?
Raven
Pat Lang is not happy with Romney speaking at his alma mater today.
Soonergrunt
@Raven: Is VMI a state institution or a private school?
ETA–one of the most liberal vets I know is a VMI graduate. He was my instructor in basic college comp.
Chris
@cmorenc:
To me it says a lot that Bush refused to fire Rumsfeld or straighten him out for the first six years of his administration no matter how badly the shit was hitting the fan in Iraq, but that he fired him within – what was it? Two days? One? – after losing the House and Senate in 2006.
It just speaks volumes about the kind of person Bush was, the kind of administration he ran and the kind of things that factored (and didn’t factor) in to his decision-making process.
? Martin
@Soonergrunt: Public.
Spatula
Links to photographic evidence, please?
Oh, wait…
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Could someone help me understand the reverence around here for Pat Lang? Something that might get me past my own prejudice (that is, anyone who holds the fucking Confederate fucking States of America as any kind of noble vision can kiss my fat black ass twice)? TIA ‘n’ shit.
Spike
@Soonergrunt: Of course not. I rather doubt that Shrub made the call on which stands of brush needed clearing down in Crawford, let alone anything more significant.
Shalimar
@Patricia Kayden:
Probably over-compensation. You get to change underwear as often as you like, so of course you can afford some consistency in your beliefs. Romney has to wear the same underwear for the rest of his life. He obviously feels the need to change other things to make up for that.
Jay in Oregon
@Yutsano:
According to Wikipedia, the officer in command of the Tora Bora mission to capture or kill Osama bin Laden had weapons drawn on them by Afghan soldiers who had reached a deal with al-Qaeda. By the time it was sorted out, bin Ladin had escaped.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora
Yutsano
@Jay in Oregon: That article also says he had orders to not pursue his strategy from unknown quarters. There’s quite a bit of ambiguity there.
Paul
So, I guess FoxNews etc would agree that this was also a foreign policy failure for Bush?
Nope! They keep telling us how Bush kept us safe etc etc.
Chris
@Paul:
I think it’s pretty clear that Obama ordered Osama killed before he could talk so he wouldn’t have a chance to reveal that Obama was one of his agents.
/average conservative
Raven
@Soonergrunt: It must be a state school. I have exchanged videos with one of the Generals there that is a pretty well known SF dude. He writes the movie reviews there.
Raven
“The Virginia Military Institute (VMI), located in Lexington, Virginia, is the oldest state-supported military college and one of six senior military colleges in the United States.”
Lurking Canadian
I confess, I also think it was a strange decision to just shoot bin Laden, assuming it was physically possible at the time to capture him instead. Not a “foreign policy failure” or whatever, I just think there would have been value in trying the fucker for 3000 counts of first degree murder.
Then again, they weren’t allowed to try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad because of his evil voodoo powers, so it’s hard to imagine how much worse the freakout would have been about bin Laden.
Capt. Seaweed
@Patricia Kayden:
Every couple days? Gross…
Paul
@Lurking Canadian:
It is easy to sit here and say they should have done this or that. As I understand it, they were taking fire. They had lost a helicopter. Their lives were at stake…
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
That’s because you don’t wear Magic Underwear(TM), like Mittens does. If you did, he’d change his positions a lot more often than you change your underwear.
Lurking Canadian
@Paul: That’s what I meant by “if possible”. In the middle of a firefight, hell yes, plug him and get out. My impression from early reports was that the compound was secure and they had him in custody then shot him, which is what I found strange.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Lurking Canadian: I’m not entirely sure there would have been much value in trying him for 3000 counts of murder. That’s like, a million counts, and more than a lot of people can really comprehend. They probably would have tried him on a dozen or so counts, and there would have been this awesome spectacle of the defense bringing up how he was captured, the fact that he didn’t actually fly the planes, how is he even indirectly responsible, etc. The government would have needed to show how they tracked down the transactions, which would have probably given them fits.
If we had caught him, I would think it would be better to try him than not, but I’m definitely not worrying the lack of a trial.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spatula:
Please find a fire to go die in, asshole.
Spatula
@Villago Delenda Est:
So…no photos?
Hypatia's Momma
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
He’d have been tried on conspiracy to commit murder, which is also a crime.
r€nato
@Soonergrunt: I am in no way a conspiracy nut, and I agree with you 100% on that. It’s mindboggling that notoriously untrustworthy Afghan mercenaries were entrusted with hunting down OBL.
Hob
@Ruckus: All citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside… so… we… can… check.
EMPY
Come on. Are we really supposed to believe that we smoked this guy and dumped him in the ocean. OBL is a wealth of intel and was captured & pumped for every ounce of value before being dropped in a deep, dark hole. We also couldn’t bring him to trial because all the top level members of our own Gov he could finger.
This doesn’t change the fact that BushII couldn’t do it and Willard wouldn’t do it. Pussies both.