Replies to post #184664 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Mitt Romney Criticizes Obama Administration Over Response To Libya, Egypt Attacks



By Joshua Hersh
Posted: 09/11/2012 11:52 pm Updated: 09/12/2012 12:29 am

The campaign of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the Obama administration's handling of a violent and contentious day at two American facilities in the Middle East "disgraceful" in a statement released late Tuesday night.

The campaign had initially planned to hold the statement until after midnight -- and the end of the eleventh anniversary of September 11th -- but lifted the embargo an hour and a half early as the controversy flared over a series of attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

"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 in the statement. "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."

The two diplomatic outposts had been the site of violent protests on Tuesday evening, as fundamentalist mobs swarmed in rage over rumors about an unreleased American film [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444017504577645681057498266.html ] -- promoted in part by the Koran-burning preacher Terry Jones -- that supposedly projected the Prophet Muhammad in a harshly critical light.

Protesters breached the wall of the embassy [ http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=xHk1I4pl ] in Cairo and burned an American flag on its grounds before replacing it with an Islamic banner. In Benghazi, a mob driven by the Islamist militant group Ansar al Sharia rampaged through the American consulate, firing at least one rocket-propelled grenade, according to the Wall Street Journal [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444017504577645681057498266.html ]. At least one American staffer was killed in the violence.

The violence took a domestic political turn, in part thanks to a statement released early Tuesday by the staff of the Cairo embassy, which condemned the film and the "continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions."

The Romney campaign's statement seemed to be an attempt to capitalize on the appearance that the Obama administration -- which has overseen the Arab Spring, and the rise of Islamist governments in both Egypt and Libya -- was capitulating to the sensitivities of an unruly Muslim crowd, rather than backing the right of an American citizen to release a disrespectful film.

But the statement criticized by the Romney campaign came early in the day, before the attacks on the two embassies, and was put out not by the White House, but by the Cairo embassy itself.

The White House later disavowed the statement as not approved by Washington, according to a senior administration official speaking to Politico [ http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/09/white-house-disavows-cairo-apology-135247.html ].

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt also commented on the statement from the Romney campaign. “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack,” LaBolt said in a statement.

In a statement released late Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack on the mission in Benghazi "in the strongest" terms, and added that while the U.S. "deplores" the denigration of religion depicted in the film, it would not countenance such violent responses.

"Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet," Clinton said. "The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."

The Libyan government also released a statement condemning the attack [ http://twitpic.com/atn4i1 ] on the American Consulate, calling it a "cowardly act." And the Muslim Brotherhood, the ruling Islamist party in Egypt, said on its Twitter page that that it "regret the attacks on [the U.S. Embassy] by angry protesters, and we urge citizens to express their opinion peacefully."

Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/mitt-romney-consulate-attack_n_1875906.html [with comments]

[DesertDrifter]

yeah, Terry Jones finally brought his "free speech" to "fire in the theater" level. His film threw gasoline on international relations... yes, he was exercising "free speech" but was also exercising no common sense.

The Movie So Offensive That Egyptians Just Stormed the U.S. Embassy Over It
By Max Fisher

Sep 11 2012

Terry Jones, the Florida Koran-burner, is helping to promote a movie vilifying Egypt's Muslims, and the Egyptian media got ahold of some clips.

Right now, protesters in Cairo are gathered at the U.S. embassy compound, where some have scaled the walls and pulled down the American flag, with which they've replaced a black flag bearing the prayer "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger." They say they're protesting an American film that insults Prophet Mohammed. About half an hour in, someone took a photo that appears to show some of the protesters, of which Reuters estimates there to be 2,000, setting off celebratory fireworks.

MORE ON EMBASSY ATTACKS

The movie is called Innocence of Muslims, although some Egyptian media have reported its title as Mohammed Nabi al-Muslimin, or Mohammed, Prophet of the Muslims. If you've never heard of it, that's because most of the few clips circulating online are dubbed in Arabic. The above clip, which is allegedly from the film (update: Kurt Werthmuller, a Coptic specialist at the Hudson Institute, says he's confirmed the clip's authenticity) is one of the only in English.* That's also because it's associated with Florida Pastor Terry Jones (yes, the asshole who burnt the Koran despite Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' pleas) and two Egyptians living in the U.S., according to Egyptian press accounts.* The Egyptians are allegedly Coptic, the Christian minority that makes up about a tenth of Egypt.

Obviously, there's a lot to this story that's still unclear. What we do know is that some members of Egypt's sometimes-raucous, often rumor-heavy media have been playing highly offensive clips from the highly offensive film, stressing its U.S. and Coptic connections. In the clip below, controversial TV host Sheikh Khaled Abdallah (known for such statements as "Iran is more dangerous to us than the Jews" and that Tehran had engineered a deadly soccer riot in Port Said) hypes the film as an American-Coptic plot and introduces what he says is its opening scene.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/the-movie-so-offensive-that-egyptians-just-stormed-the-us-embassy-over-it/262225/