President Needs to Be Ready For Attacks Over Libya Tonight

     The President should turn this around on Governor Romney and hold him accountable for his shameless attempt to politicize this tragedy before we even knew what had really happened.

      Romney was initially shot down by the media for his clumsy attempt to politicize the tragedy. So much for politics stopping at the water's edge. The President should point out this politicizing and that the parents of two of the four victims-both Ambassador Christopher Stevens' father, Jan Stevens-as well as the slain navy seal, Brian Doherty's mother, Barbara Doherty have asked Romney to stop it.

      Jan Stevens was pretty categorical in what he said. That Romney should not be politicizing it, and contrary to what Romney and his GOP friends are claiming, the President has been above board in the aftermath of this tragedy. There has been a full and transparent investigation and Jan Stevens rebukes the Governor with just that point.

      The other thing we've been hearing a lot about is that the President was wrong to criticize the anti-Islamic YouTube video. Actually, initially Romney had used the the words of the U.S. Embassy in Libya criticizing the video as proof the President was "sympathetic to terrorists" although he actually had nothing to do with the video, it was the embassy that put it out-and their video was completely right in criticizing the hateful video-whose creators had said they thought it would lead to violence.

     Lately the spin is that the President has said it was the attack was solely about the video and that it had nothing to do with it. All of this is just the usual exaggeration and sleazy spin we've come to expect from the Romney big lie machine.  In actual fact, it's a lot more open to debate just what part the video played, but in Libya the video is seen as important:

     "Richard Williamson is Mitt Romney’s top foreign policy advisor, the guy who orchestrated Romney’s original effort to exploit the attack in Libya before it was even clear the US Ambassador had died. Now he’s saying that Romney will insist Obama “man up” and take responsibility for the Ambassador’s death at tonight’s debate."

     "This comes as the latest reports from Libya make clear that the entire ‘scandal’ Romney and his crew have tried to whip up is as baseless as you might have expected. People in Libya actually still think the attack was tied to the notorious video tape. Whether that’s right and that’s true isn’t clear. But it’s more evidence of the actual uncertainty over just what happened and how much success the Romney camp has had gaming the political press into imagining a scandal or “cover up” at the heart of this."

     "The real story is basically what it was the night of — Mitt Romney giddy to exploit US deaths as quickly as possible."

      http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/10/nothing_but_sleaze.php?ref=fpblg

      As you can see the President has ample ammunition here to fight back. My concern is that having Hillary Clinton fall on her sword only seems to suggest that the President's Administration has done something wrong and Hillary is taking the fall for it.

      In fact, he should aggressively point out Romney's shameless politicizing and that in fact the question about the video is still open to question even if Romney has convinced the media that it isn't./