VAN Meter, Iowa, Oct 9, 2012 (AFP)
VAN Meter, Iowa, Oct 9, 2012 (AFP)
Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney said Tuesday that a former US Navy SEAL killed in the militant raid on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a Massachusetts acquaintance of his.
Romney told a crowd of supporters who gathered at an Iowa farm for a campaign stop that a neighbor had introduced him a few years ago to Glen Doherty, and the two had a long talk at a party hosted by the neighbor.
Doherty had been part of a US security detail in Benghazi when the consulate came under attack on September 11, and he was one of four Americans killed, including ambassador Christopher Stevens.
“We had a lot of things in common,” Romney said Tuesday, in what is believed to be his first campaign trail mention of having known the veteran.
“You can imagine how I felt when I found out that he was one of the two former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi on September 11,” Romney said.
“It touched me, obviously, as I recognized that this young man that I thought was so impressive had lost his life in service of his fellow men and women.”
Romney put out a condolence statement on September 13 about the death of Doherty, a native of Massachusetts where Romney had served as governor.
His campaign said he only learned conclusively in the past week that Doherty was the man Romney had come to know from the party a few years prior.
Romney noted that Doherty had been in a separate “safe” annex when the attack occurred, and raced to the consulate to try to help.
“They didn’t hunker down where they were in safety, they rushed there to go help,” the Republican nominee said.
“This is the American way. We go where there’s trouble. We go where needed,” he added. “And right now we’re needed. Right now the American people need us.”
The Benghazi attack has emerged as a major point of contention on the campaign trail, and Romney has hammered President Barack Obama for his administration’s conflicting explanations about what happened.
It first described the attack as being part of a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam film before finally conceding, late last month, “that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to Al-Qaeda.”
Romney directly linked the Benghazi attack to terrorism on Monday during a major foreign policy speech in Virginia.
“The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts. They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East,” Romney said, adding that Benghazi “was likely the work of the same forces that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001.”
