Maddow Blasts Romney Foreign Policy Adviser's Remarks: Did 9/11 Happen Because Bush Lacked 'Resolve'?

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On Friday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow took a look at the response to Mitt Romney's remarks as news of protests overseas broke here in the U.S. In particular, she cast her gaze on Richard Williamson, the Romney campaign's senior foreign policy adviser, who told The Washington Post this week that, if Romney were president, the protesters would not have stormed our embassies overseas in the first place because they would have more respect for the United States and for the president's 'resolve.'

Williamson, Maddow pointed out, previously worked within the Bush administration, serving as Bush's Special Envoy to Sudan. During that administration, said Maddow, there were fatal attacks on U.S. diplomatic sites in Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan, as well as the September 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. 'Where these attacks,' Maddow asked, 'because George W. Bush didn't have resolve?'

Maddow guessed that is not actually an argument the Romney campaign wishes to have, but it is the argument they're making in public.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson then joined the host, referring to the campaign's response as a 'late and half-hearted and amateurish' attempt to make chicken salad out of something less pleasant than chicken and gourmet wasabi mayonnaise (recommended!).

Maddow agreed, noting that Romney's response seemed to demonstrate a sort of 'inappropriate temperament' for someone so close to a sensitive role. In fact, his reaction made her question the U.S.'s vetting process for our would-be leaders.

She then turned the discussion over to the argument that Romney's foreign policy plans don't matter and won't form a huge part of this election, asking Robinson if this line of thinking still stands in light of the current turmoil overseas. He felt this has never been the case for an election, because foreign policy will always matter, there will be crises and there will always be crises.

Have a look, via MSNBC:

• Rachel uses logic as a weapon against people that count Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, and Pat Boone as their opinion shapers. Just sayin'.

• Obama gave a half-hearted statement about a US Ambassador who was murdered. He was raped by Libyan animals and his body dragged through the street.

  Then of course, he headed off to campaign and fundraise and tried to deflect blame from his policies to anger at a you tube video.

  This disgrace to humanity has no shame. He had better find a way to meet with our best ally in the ME next week, Benjamin Netanyahu.

  When Obama is out, our enemies will respect and fear us and our allies will learn to trust us again.

• The little lady on the rotten TV show is bending over backwards to excuse Obama's incompetence and failures.

  Obama can do no wrong in the mental ward known as MSNBC.

• And what logic and knowledge does Russell Maddow use?

• What a week' in just a week, obama's foreign policy blows up in our faces, he claims Egypt no longer an ally (they were when you took office' Bush's fault?), his administration tries to shut down free speech, his administration blames the outrage in all these countries on a Youtube video, and all Maddow can think to criticize is Romney for saying something about it before obama did? What a joke this guy is

• yawn

  not wasting my breath on you, as anyone that thinks a sexist joke is a checkmate is beyond help (as well as a handle that celebrates a fat/mean/lying propagandist)

• Hmmm, the film is to blame is there excuse? http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/09/while-white-house-denounces-recent-anti.html Yet the Obama White House is good taking money and campaign contributions from Anti Islam filmmakers'

• Maddow is a liar. A youtube video did result in the death of Ambassador Stevens. It was a youtube video posted by Ayman al Zawahiri two days before the attack, calling for Libyans to attack the Americans. The attack involved RPGs and mortars. It was organized and it was planned. It was about 9/11 and revenge, not the anti Islam video (that excuse came later to inflate the mob).

• meanwhile her colleague, Ezra Klein, is doing an actual investigation. I realize annoy right wingers won't like the tone of his report, thus it is not a right wing hit job, despite being reposted at the DC. I think he does an excellent job of showing what is really going on in the Middle East and it also illustrates what Ron Paul has been talking about for some time. The reasons for attacks against Americans abroad go well beyond some idiotic video that was poorly produced. For the WH to pretend it is the cause is disingenuous in the extreme.

• Hmmmm, 'When Obama is out, our enemies will respect and fear us and our allies will learn to trust us again''.'respected&feared' huh!? Nice Dream tho''''
  March 15(80): armed members of FALN raided the campaign headquarters of President Jimmy Carter in Chicago and the campaign headquarters of George H. W. Bush in New York City. Seven people in Chicago and ten people in New York were tied up as the offices were vandalized before the FALN members fled. A few days later, Carter delegates in Chicago received threatening letters from FALN
  October 7 ' October 10(85): Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking by Palestinian Liberation Front, during which passenger Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old wheelchair-using Jewish American citizen, is shot dead and thrown overboard
  November 5(90): Assassination of Meir Kahane head of Israel's Koch party and founder of the American vigilante group the Jewish Defense League in a Manhattan, New York hotel lobby by early elements of Al Queda
  January 25(93): Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fires an AK-47 assault rifle into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters, killing two and injuring three others, see FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
  U.S. embassy bombings(98) in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000, by al-Qaeda, see FBI Most Wanted Terrorists
  911'no other words!

• Why does Valerie Jarrett have a full time 24 hour Secret Service detail, and why is an Ambassador in Libya on the anniversary of 9/11 so unprotected?

  'Colonel: Hillary Made Decision Not to Post Marines at Benghazi'

  http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/14/Colonel-Says-Hillary-Clinton-Made-Decision-to-Have-No-Marines-at-Benghazi

• The provable, verifiable kind or don't you know,

• Rachel Takes The Gop Talking Points and turns them on their head. Delicious

• Thank you. I agree completely. Rachel Maddow has been stellar on this story. Richard Engel is our news industry's greatest asset and Ezra Klein's reporting is pitch perfect.

  As I said, she's been better on this story than anyone else, and a better journalist on this story than a water-carrier for President Obama. She should stick with journalism and lean less on politics.

• Oh come on now. you know you'd be throwing a conniption fit if he had called Egypt an ally.

• Okay, let me get this straight. Rachel likes Obama's disastrous foreign policy, which is leading to crises in ten different countries right now. But she doesn't like Romney talking about it? Ah, poor Rachel Maddow, forced to play a very poor hand of cards in this debate.

• Bahahahaha ' Rachel criticizing Romney is such a fun thing to watch. I wonder why Rach and her pals never were concerned when Obama said 'only he would have given the command for the mission to take out OBL, and that Romney would never have done so '.'gutsy move' and all'!
  Honestly, these liberals and their biases are just too damn funny. Watching Dianne, Scott and BriWi claim this is all the result of a 'movie' is embarrassing for them. Word is the threat information was available, the consultate had been attacked by an IED just a few months ago, and yet'.no protection on 9/11, so the coordinated terrorist attacks were successful. The actionalble intelligence was ignored because Obama was too busy golfing and playing with his liberal buddies JZ, Beyonce, the DJ, and lots of others.
  Obama ignored the intelligence Rachel ' you can protect him all you want, but the more you do, the more embarrassing it is for you and yours.
  Obama knew and didn't do anything.

• the movie was released in July ' this was a coordinated attack on the US on teh anniversary on 9/11 ' the first on this anniversary due solely to the policy of appeasment by Obama.

• If Rachel Maddow really wants to impress us, she should try to explain Obama's support of the 'Arab Spring' unrest that led to precisely the mess we are in right now. Of course, she can't do that, and knows she can't. So instead she attacks people who point out the obvious failures and fiascos that Obama has left in his wake.

• Follow the cycle. 911 was planned for years under Clinton's watch. Bush comes in and inherits the same crappy intelligence agencies. We are attacked under Bush's watch but Bush fixes the system and prevents another attack. Obama takes over and rules with appeasement. Terrorist see weakness and attack us again.

  Man i feel so much safer under dems.

• With good reason! Obama had the Muslim Brotherhood sit in the FIRST row to the shock and horror of Mubarak (our ally). Mubarak advised and predicted what is happening right now. The Muslim Brotherhood, who have expressed a wish to have the black Muslim flag fly over the White House, run Egypt. Obama is right. Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood is not our ally. They are, however, Obama's. Undeniably.