Wednesday, September 12, 2012

U.S. ambassador to Libya killed

The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other American diplomats were killed when suspected Libyan religious extremists stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi late Tuesday, sparking a security crisis across the North African country and raising tensions across the Middle East.

Libyan officials spent the night in a manhunt trying to find those responsible for the killings, which occurred when an angry armed mob attacked the diplomatic complex in an apparent protest against an anti-Islamic video created and produced by an American-Israeli real-estate developer.

President Barack Obama in Washington condemned in the "strongest possible terms" the attack, saying the U.S. will work with the Libyan government to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice. "Make no mistake, justice will be done,'' the president said, but he didn't elaborate.

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Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday assailed President Barack Obama anew over his administration's handling of foreign attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions, saying the president's team sent "mixed signals to the world" in the face of violence.

Obama, who earlier condemned "the outrageous attack" that killed U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff, planned a statement in the Rose Garden shortly after Romney defended his response to the violence before knowing the diplomats were dead.

"The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth, but also for the words that come from his ambassadors , from his administration, form his embassies, from his state department," Romney said. "They clearly sent mixed messages to the world. The statement that came from the administration — and the embassy is the administration — the statement that came from the administration was a statement which is akin to apology. And I think was a severe miscalculation."

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt responded Tuesday night that the campaign was "shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Gov. Romney would choose to launch a political attack." The president planned to make a statement Wednesday morning in a White House Rose Garden appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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