The Big Debate Shaping Up Over Foreign Policy

At the presidential debate on Wednesday night, Governor Romney revealed President Obama’s tired rhetoric for what it is: a weak attempt to mask a record of failure.

But the first signs that the President's luck was about to change didn’t come with Governor Romney’s excellent performance on Wednesday — they came in that morning’s New York Times.

As a left-wing president, you know you’re in trouble when you’ve lost liberal columnist, Maureen Dowd, on national security.

On op-ed page of Wednesday’s Times, Dowd alleged that “The Obama administration sidestepped Al Qaeda ties in the case of the Libyan attack to perpetuate the narrative that the president had decimated Al Qaeda when Osama bin Laden was killed, and to preclude allegations that they were asleep at the switch on the anniversary of 9/11. Better to blame it all on a spontaneous protest to an anti-Islam video on YouTube.”

In fact, fallout from the Obama administration’s response to the crisis in the Middle East may be only just beginning. The more we learn about what actually happened surrounding the attacks of September 12, 2012, the more the administration’s response looks nakedly political.

We now know that the administration realized within 24 hours that the assault which killed our ambassador and three other Americans was almost certainly a terrorist attack linked to Al Qaeda. As an American intelligence official told Yahoo News, “’In this case, the intel has been spot-on from the beginning’… American intelligence reached the conclusion that the assault on the consulate was terrorism ‘on Day One’ and ‘the Brits, the French, Italians all said the same thing … within 48 hours.’”

Twenty four hours. That would be right around the time President Obama began cracking jokes at his Las Vegas fundraiser.

Inexplicably, the administration spent more than a week trying to convince the public that the attack in Benghazi was actually a protest of an obscure anti-Islamic movie that simply got out of hand.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was amazingly determined to drive the idea that “the cause of the unrest was a video,” as he told questioners repeatedly. Our U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, went on the Sunday shows to repeat this bizarre yarn, long after the administration apparently knew it was false.

The same day, Libyan National Congress President Mohamd Magariaf told interviewers that the version of events the administration was pushing publicly was “completely unfounded and preposterous.”

But Carney continued to insist the attacks were a response to the cartoonish video until September 20, when the administration abruptly shifted and said it was “self-evident” that the attack was a terrorist incident.

We know now that, as Fox News reported, “There was no major protest in Benghazi before the deadly attack which killed four Americans.”

For the full timeline we’ve put together of the Obama administration’s dishonesty about what happened in Libya, click here.

The administration’s unwillingness to level with the American people about vital matters of national security raises very serious questions. If, for political reasons, our leaders willfully deceived us about an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist attack that killed American citizens, not only is it utterly shameful but it proves they are unfit to guarantee our safety.

Meanwhile, as it ignored the implications of the Libya attack, the administration announced its intention to send another half-billion dollars in foreign aid to Egypt, where on September 11 our embassy was breached, our flag torn down, and an Islamist banner raised.

This is a country whose Prime Minister was asked the other week on the BBC if he thought the U.S. should modify its laws to prevent people from insulting Islam, and he said, "We have to do all it takes to stop [insults] from happening. I'm calling on them to take the necessary measures to ensure insulting billions of people, one-and-a-half billion people and their beliefs, does not happen and people pay for what they do and at the same time make sure that the reflections of the true Egyptian and Muslims is well in the Western media."

Thus while attempting to diminish an Al Qaeda-linked attack on our consulate in Libya, the Obama administration is funding a government whose leaders advocate shredding the first amendment of the American Constitution.

And what did Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, have to say to the New York Times about America's generous aid to Egypt?"

Far from it: “Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region.”

Since 2001, we have sent $18 billion. This year, we will send another $1 billion.

It’s time to stop sending the money of hardworking American taxpayers to governments who would destroy our free speech and who are telling us our money has done more harm than good. And it’s time to elect a president here at home who tells us the truth about our national security.

Well written as always, Newt.

I will be very interested to see what the spin is during the foreign policy debate.

There is so much damning material. Libya, Fast and Furious, ROE change in Afghanistan and on and on.

Don’t go wobbly, Mitt.

Nobody died due to Watergate! Obama and his merry bunch of Keystone Kops continued to explain away the attacks as due to an anti-Muslim clip on You-tube for WEEKS rather than telling the truth. I don't doubt that his politically motivated rationalization helped to foment MORE protests in other Muslim countries which resulted in additional deaths, destruction of American property, bad will and damaged diplomacy. Who knows, if he had waited a day, he could have known the true nature of the attacks and maybe could have averted the other violent protests. Al Qaeda took advantage of the situation to do even more damage by riling up the already testy emotions of the people and they further damaged the reputation of America.

If, from the start, the Obama administration had stood firm in their resolve to fight back against the terrorist violence in Libya - when the evidence proved it had been planned for months - it may have averted the additional protests and other lives could have been saved. As it stands now, due to ANOTHER Obama screw-up, Al Qaeda not only accomplished its goal of overthrowing the American presence in Libya and murdering our ambassador but also furthering the violence, anger and hatred for America in other Muslim countries including the newly "democratic" Egypt. Obama handed them an easy win tied with a bow and now he wants to award Egypt with more money put on the credit card - that SAME credit card BTW that Obama accused Bush with the financing of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the debate Wednesday night.

We cannot afford another four years of Obama's on-the-job-training. He STILL hasn't learned in four years the Law of Unintended Consequences nor that, when it comes to doing what is best for America, it STARTS with being honest to Americans. He has sacrificed our safety, our economy, our future for his own political future - we need someone who will not put himself/herself first but the good of our nation. Obama MUST be defeated.

There is enough material in Zer0’s foreign policy flop in the Middle East for Romney to win victory this November. The up coming “townhall” on foreign policy should see Zer0 taken to the wood shed by Romney over his reckless policy in the Middle East. I mean, Romney should be able to whack Zer0 so hard the sound will echo around the world.

America is now seeing the catastrophe under way. They should be smart enough to know it was not due to some 14 minute video. What the American People do not know is this a coordinated uprising by those who know that Israel is about to take out Iran’s nukes. They want America to fear what will happen if we give our support to our ally, Israel, in any way.

The foreign policy debate is going to be an unmitigated disaster for Obama ,,, everything he has “accomplished” in the ME is predicated on lies. There can be nothing worse for him than to have truth shown to the public in the face of his lies knowing that the public will be able to discern the truth as 4 years of his policies will be easily explained in one paragraph.. And none of it was for the good of America.

I guarantee that he has an excedrin headache right now just thinking about it... and that he will push ahead with his propaganda ,, he cannot acknowledge the truth ... He will be DONE.

Libya is not an isolated incident showing Obama killing Americans to keep up his ruse of the “religion of peace.”

He’s killing soldiers in on bases in the same way and then covering it up with explainations like “workplace accidents”, etc. He has jihadists on the bases murdering soldiers in Afghanistan.

He has jihadists serving as advisors in the government. He’s naming Christians an equal threat to homeland security as Muslims upon the race baiting demands of Islamists. He shifted homeland security resources by changing the mission from keeping the homeland safe from jihadist attacks to naming his political and social enemies as domestic terrorists.

He’s sexually molesting and abusing Americans at the airports in the name of stopping jihadist attacks. He’s spying on and collecting files on Americans who have nothing to do with jihadists.

His enemy is the American people and he’s used the power given to the US gov. after 911 to abuse Americans via stripping aways their constitutional rights.

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