Romney Calls It Inappropriate to Politicize Bin Laden Death
May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, stopping at a New York firehouse that lost personnel in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said he would have authorized the operation that tracked down Osama bin Laden and killed him.
Romney also termed it "inappropriate" for President Barack Obama to have politicized the anniversary of the raid with a campaign advertisement that suggests the former Massachusetts governor wouldn't have acted likewise.
"Had I been president of the United States, I would have made the same decision the president made" to carry out the raid that resulted in the death of the al-Qaeda leader, Romney said after his meeting with the firefighters.
He was accompanied by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Earlier, he met with current Mayor Michael Bloomberg to discuss issues that included gun control laws and immigration policy.
The firehouse, located in the Greenwich Village area, lost 11 people in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
Obama and all others involved in the Bin Laden raid, including intelligence officials and the armed forces, deserve credit for the successful mission, Romney said.
Obama's campaign released an ad April 27 that features former President Bill Clinton calling Obama courageous for ordering the raid, and questioning whether Romney would have made the same call. It notes that, during his first presidential run, Romney said in an April 2007 interview, "It's not worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."
Pushing Back
In pushing back today against the ad, Romney on the CBS program "This Morning" said, "These silly kinds of attacks, it's like, what has that got to do with getting our economy going. Of course I would have taken out Osama bin Laden."
He made similar comments yesterday during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Obama arrived in Afghanistan today on an unannounced trip to sign a partnership agreement with the Afghan government that is a prelude to the military disengagement by the U.S. from the decade-long war.
The accord that outlines future U.S. support for Afghanistan took a year of negotiations and marks a milestone for the administration's goal of handing over security responsibility to local forces by the end of 2014.
Obama Speech
Obama plans to follow the signing by delivering a televised address from Bagram Airfield base at about 7:30 p.m. Washington time before returning to the U.S.
With national security matters in the forefront this week, the Romney campaign's spokesman on such issues, Richard Grenell, who is openly gay, resigned today following attacks by anti-gay activists,
"My ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign," Grenell said, according to a statement obtained by the Washington Post, which earlier reported the resignation.
Grenell also thanked Romney "for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team."
Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades expressed disappointment "that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons." In a statement, Rhoades said, "We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill."
Endorsement Question
In his meeting with Bloomberg, Romney said that he didn't ask for the mayor's endorsement.
Bloomberg later said he hasn't decided whether he will endorse a presidential candidate, while he acknowledged clear differences between Obama and Romney.
"I'll see down the road," Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. "I think both are very smart, very formidable candidates. They're very different, and they give the public a real choice."
Bloomberg's press secretary, Stu Loeser, said the private session lasted about 30 minutes at the mayor's philanthropic foundation in Manhattan.
Bloomberg is a former Democrat who became a Republican to run for mayor in 2001 and 2005 and then became an independent in 2007. He won his third mayoral term running on the Independence Party and Republican Party ballot lines in 2009. He met with Obama for a March 11 lunch at the White House. On April 27, he played golf in the Washington area with Vice President Joe Biden.
Discussing Issues
Loeser said Bloomberg and Romney discussed issues the mayor has emphasized over the years, including increased efforts to prevent illegal gun sales and less restrictive immigration laws. In his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney has stressed his support for gun rights and taken a tough stance on illegal immigration.
"We need a president who will enforce current laws, not create new ones that only serve to burden lawful gun owners," Romney said in an April 13 speech at the National Rifle Association's convention in St Louis.
"It's hard to argue that you can't tell the difference" between Romney and Obama on the issues, Bloomberg said in his comments at City Hall. "They run the spectrum on lots of different issues."
Romney told reporters he and Bloomberg discussed "a wide array of things," mostly about the city. "The mayor and I had a very nice chat," he said.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.
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