Of all the countries for Mitt Romney to concentrate on, Mali seems to make no sense. Sure there are some bad things happening there but compared to Yemen or Pakistan, Mali is a side show. So why Mali? The answer below the squiggly.
First here is what Mitt Romney said.
First there was this question:
"The first segment is the challenge of a changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism. I'm going to put this into two segments so you'll have two topic questions within this one segment on the subject. The first question, and it concerns Libya. The controversy over what happened there continues. Four Americans are dead, including an American ambassador. Questions remain. What happened? What caused it? Was it spontaneous? Was it an intelligence failure? Was it a policy failure? Was there an attempt to mislead people about what really happened?
Governor Romney, you said this was an example of an American policy in the Middle East that is unraveling before our very eyes."
His response:
"Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali by al-Qaeda type individuals"
After a few minutes of talking by both Romney and President Obama, Romney added:
"With Mali now having North Mali taken over by Al Qaida; with Syria having Assad continuing to -- to kill, to murder his own people, this is a region in tumult."
Looking at them together, it seems clear that he memorized a bullet about North/Northern Mali. So Why Mali? It is as simple as ABC.
The intelligence briefings that Team Romney started receiving include one titled "___ Talking Points" and unlike most other briefs, they are organized by Combatant Command (COCOM) in alphabetical order. First up - AFRICOM. #1 item - Mali. Why Mali? Because it was the first item on a brief with "Talking Points" in the title.
Funny thing is that he is probably the only person of note to ever read the AFRICOM input to that brief. The rest of us skip to CENTCOM, EUCOM and PACOM because no one gives a damn what happens in AFRICOM.