US News

O commits major foreign policy flub as Mitt battles on

President Obama speaks during a fundraiser event at the Capital Hilton Hotel yesterday in Washington.

President Obama speaks during a fundraiser event at the Capital Hilton Hotel yesterday in Washington. (Getty Images)

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration took new heat yesterday over its conflicting statements about the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, after the US intelligence chief’s office said that there was a “deliberate and organized” terror attack that involved al Qaeda.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress are now calling for probes into the matter, and the confusion could hurt Obama in the presidential race, in which he has long held an edge on foreign-policy issues.

“I think it’s increasingly clear—if now not definitively pointed out — that this was a terrorist attack against our diplomats,” Mitt Romney said yesterday in his sharpest statements yet on the matter.

“There was a great deal of confusion about that from the very beginning on the part of the administration, and whether that was something that they were trying to paper over or whether it was just confusion given the uncertain intelligence reports, time will tell,” Romney added.

After the Sept. 11 attack in Libya — in which US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed — the White House maintained that the event was a spontaneous outburst, based on the information it said was then currently available.

UN Ambassador Susan Rice, an Obama confidante and possible pick for secretary of state in a second Obama term, gave similar assurances in a series of Sunday talk-show appearances.

But yesterday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office tried to take the blame for giving the White House bad information that the attack was spontaneous.

“In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo,” said the statement, put out by Shawn Turner of the DNI’s office.

“As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack,” he continued.

The statement concluded that “some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda.”

Yesterday afternoon, Rep. Peter King (R-LI), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called for Rice’s resignation over the matter.

Meanwhile, Romney yesterday stumped in Pennsylvania, where he’s far down in the polls.

“We really would shock people if early in the evening of Nov. 6 it looked like Pennsylvania was going to come our way and actually did come our way. That can happen,” Romney told about 200 donors at a $50,000-per-ticket fund-raiser in Philadelphia.