A State Department officer was killed after armed protesters stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, furious about an amateur video that has been viewed as insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.About that video, here's the AP:
The protest was a result of outrage over a movie being promoted by an anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States, clips of which are available on YouTube and dubbed in Egyptian Arabic. The video depicts Muhammad as a fraud, and shows him having sex and calling for massacres. Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad at all, much less in an insulting way.The Wall Street Journal reported:
In the hours leading up to the rally in Cairo, the U.S. Embassy there invoked the First Amendment rights to free speech, but said the film constituted an abuse of those rights.So how does the Romney Campaign respond to the death of a State Department officer?
"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions," it said in a statement. "Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others." [emphasis added]
By smearing the Obama Administration with a lie:
"I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi,” Romney said. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”It's simple, the statement out of the embassy in Cairo was not made in response to the attacks - but to the youtube film.
It's bad enough to politicize the death of a State Department officer, but to smear while doing it is even worse. Everything that follows from the Romney Campaign is a lie.
A disgraceful lie.
