The fact is that there were protests in tens of Islamic countries AFTER Benghazi happened over the film. The film was and is offensive to Muslims and there was real confusion in those countries, where the government does control media, as to why the US allowed this film to be made and distributed.
This action had little to do with the Republican charge that the Obama administration blamed a movie rather than terrorists for the attack. In fact, the first person in 2012 to raise the issue of the movie was Romney. The evening of the Benghazi attack immediately after we learned that the ambassador was killed, Romney went out with a statement, that backfired badly, that blamed the Obama administration and complained of the US CAIRO embassy putting out a statement disowning any US government connection to that movie. The reasons were that there were threats to the Cairo embassy because of anger over the film. The intent of that statement, put out by a career diplomat, was to tamp down the anger and reduce the danger. Romney called THAT a response to Benghazi - ignoring that it was issued BEFORE the attack in Benghazi and was not related.
Obama and Clinton both spoke of acts of terrorism when the bodies were returned to the US. In the strange world of Republican speak -- they both failed to use the exact, prescribed secret words - that likely would have been changed had they used the exact same words the Republicans were wanting. This instance of Obama saying "terrorism" was the one referenced by Candy Crowley, of all people, when Romney argued that Obama had never spoken of Islamofascist terrorism. )
Where the Republicans did get something to work with was when Susan Rice mentioned the movie in her talking points on 5 Sunday talk shows. Given that this was soon before the election and it was said in all the interviews, it is likely that someone on the reelection team thought that mentioning this was a good idea. It might have been to pull attention back to Romney's ill advised and damaging statement the day the attack happened. It might simply have been to divert from the obvious questions of whether the Benghazi attackers were actually the same Benghazis that the US entered the fray in Libya to defend.
That was the question I feared in 2012 - given the war weariness and the fact that the Obama message was that the Iraq war was over and the Afghanistan War almost done, Osama Bin Laden was dead, and things were getting more peaceful. Looking back at 2012, from what we now know was the situation in Syria, Libya, Yemen etc -- Obama was very lucky that Romney did not have the ability to exploit the real problems.
= new reply since forum marked as read
