Debate moderator Candy Crowley: Romney was right in main Libya argument, but ...

Debate moderator Candy Crowley admitted that Romney was right to address the president’s response to the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, but he “picked the wrong world.”
 
Crowley explained that she re-read Obama’s Rose Garden speech transcript before the debate, noting that the president referred to “acts of terror.”

Romney insisted that the President refused to call the attacks an “act of terror” which Obama countered with the transcript of his Rose Garden speech.

But Crowley admitted that she also agreed with Romney during the debate, when he said that the Obama administration spent two weeks telling Americans the attacks were about “a tape and this riot outside the Benghazi consulate, which there wasn’t.”

“He was right in the main, I just think he picked the wrong word,” Crowley concluded. (Read more).

My Comment: I am glad she is sitting the record straight but after the fact it does little good. The debate moderator should not interject herself in the debate and and challenge the accuracy of a statement made by a debate participant.  See the below piece from the Wall Street Journal to see the context of what the President said in the Rose Garden.

Replay: Obama’s Rose Garden Remarks on Libya

The Wall Street Journal, Oct.17, 2012

In Tuesday’s debate, President Barack Obama for the first time accepted responsibility for the security lapses that contributed to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya. He sought to turn the issue against Mr. Romney, accusing him of playing politics with a national-security crisis.
 
Mr. Obama said he called the Benghazi attack “an act of terror” during a statement in the Rose Garden the day after it occurred, challenging Republican accusations that the administration had been misleading when it described the attack as a demonstration sparked by an anti-Muslim video.

“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,” Mr. Romney said.
“Get the transcript,” the president replied.

Mr. Obama did make reference to the fact that “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,” but his comments that day also appeared to reference the video, when he said, “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” The administration changed its description of the attack, eventually describing it as a terror attack linked to al Qaeda sympathizers. Read more and see video here.

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