OK… so Mitt Romney, asked if he would have given the order to go after Osama Bin Laden, as President Obama's new campaign video suggests Romney wouldn't have done, replied:
"Of course, even Jimmy Carter would have given that order."
http://www.politico.com/...
But I think that President Obama’s criticism on this point is wholly valid. During the 2007-2008 campaign Romney repeatedly indicated that he would NOT go after Bin Laden if necessary.
In April 2007, Romney spoke directly about bin Laden -- he told the Associated Press:
“it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
“…Romney’s “heaven and earth” line proved a gaffe at the time as well. Sen. John McCain, who tried to portray Romney throughout the race as weak on national security, told blogger Jennifer Rubin that “it takes a degree of naiveté to think [bin Laden is] not an element in the struggle against radical Islam.”
Byron York, columnist for the (conservative) National Review, held nothing back, writing at the time, “we have already spent billions and gone to a lot of effort to try to get bin Laden … it would be worth still more money and still more effort to kill the man behind 9/11.”
“I can’t imagine any serious Republican candidate for president would say otherwise,” York wrote. “Perhaps Romney should watch the tape of the planes hitting the towers again.”
Later on, in August, Romney again rejected the option of going after bin Laden…
“Obama on Wednesday said if elected president in November 2008 he would be willing to launch military strikes against al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan with or without the approval of the Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf.
"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops "shouldn't be sent all over the world." He called Obama's comments "ill-timed" and "ill-considered."
"There is a war being waged by terrorists of different types and nature across the world," Romney said. "We want, as a civilized world, to participate with other nations in this civilized effort to help those nations reject the extreme with them."
http://in.reuters.com/...
Several days later, Romney again criticized then-candidate Obama:
“Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), in particular, was singled out for saying last week that he would act against terrorists in Pakistan without the support of its president. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney contrasted those comments with Obama's remark during a recent debate that he would be willing to meet with all foreign leaders.
"I mean, in one week he went from saying he's going to sit down, you know, for tea, with our enemies, but then he's going to bomb our allies," Romney said. "He's gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week."
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, quickly responded that "the fact that the same Republican candidates who want to keep 160,000 American troops in the middle of a civil war couldn't agree that we should take out Osama bin Laden if we had him in our sights, proves why Americans want to turn the page on the last seven years of Bush-Cheney foreign policy."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Perhaps Romney’s comments from the last campaign shouldn’t be taken seriously – as apparently he’s been on each and every side of almost every conceivable issue. But who are we to know what he really thinks about going after bin Laden? If we take Romney at his word (a dicey proposition indeed) we can only conclude that he would not have gone after bin Laden as President Obama has done.
Even President Carter did attempt to go after the Iranian hostage takers (though the effort proved unsuccessful)… so Mitt Romney is apparently not even up to President Carter’s caliber when it comes to this issue …
… and he is certainly not up to President Obama's caliber. The President’s video in which he questions whether Romney would have gone after bin Laden is perfectly valid.