Candy Crowley should have kept her mouth shut as specified in the debate commission rules....but instead she inputted her liberal bias to slant the debate...Romney was right...Obama has been coverint this up since day 1....he ran from the rose garden to go to Vegas to a fundraiser....What an embarassment he is....
FACT CHECK: Did Obama really call consulate attack in Libya an 'act of terror'?
Published October 16, 2012 FoxNews.com
One of the tensest moments in an already tense debate Tuesday night came as President Obama and Mitt Romney clashed over the Obama administration's changing explanation for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.
In particular, Romney questioned whether Obama had called the attack an "act of terror" rather than "spontaneous" violence that grew out of a protest against an anti-Islam video. The moderator, CNN's Candy Crowley, intervened, saying Romney was half right.
ROMNEY: I think (it's) interesting the president just said something which -- which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
OBAMA: That's what I said.
ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you're saying?
OBAMA: Please proceed governor.
ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
OBAMA: Get the transcript.
CROWLEY: It -- it -- it -- he did in fact, sir.
Click for the full debate transcript.
Crowley went on to side with Romney about the administration's confusing account, saying it took two weeks for officials to say more definitively that the attack was more than an out-of-control protest.
But Obama also hadn't explicitly labeled the Bengazi strike as an "act of terror" as early as he claimed, though his comments on Sept. 12 in the Rose Garden indeed included that phrase.
"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for," Obama said. "Today we mourn for more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done. But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers."
Click for the full Rose Garden transcript.
But four days later, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., went on five networks' Sunday shows and cast the attack as hardly a coordinated strike by terrorists.
"We are obviously investigating this very closely. The FBI has a lead in this investigation," Rice said Sept. 16 on "Fox News Sunday." "The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. That what happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent and those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in post-revolutionary Libya and that then spun out of control.
"But we don't see at this point signs this was a coordinated plan, premeditated attack. Obviously, we will wait for the results of the investigation and we don't want to jump to conclusions before then. But I do think it's important for the American people to know our best current assessment."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and other administration officials did little to discredit that assessment until Sept. 19, when Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center testified at a Senate hearing.
"Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," Olsen said.
Even so, Obama taped an interview on ABC's "The View" on Sept. 24, nearly two weeks after the attack, in which he declined to label the attack terrorism when asked. Instead, he would only go as far as to say the attack "wasn't just a mob action."
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