A new Obama campaign video plays up the killing of bin Laden and questions whether Romney would have done it:
Politico reports:
The White House is finally offering some comment on its decision to open the situation room to Brian Williams and the NBC News cameras for next Wednesday's interview about Osama bin Laden, which NBC is calling a "first for network television."
"The piece is in large part pegged off of that iconic situation room photo," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor explained via email.
"A year later there's still enormous interest in the events of that day and the operation to kill UBL," he added. "This is another window into that remarkable day."
Vietor added that the White House held a video tour of the facility on its blog, and that the Bush Administration gave reporters a tour of the situation room in 2006.AP reports:
The strategy underscores the fact that the Obama who ordered the raid as commander in chief is now seeking a second term as president. The risk is the political blowback that can come if he is seen as crossing a line into politicizing national security.
"Sad," said a Romney spokeswoman. "Shameless," said 2008 Obama election foe John McCain.
Biden even combined the killing of the al-Qaida leader and Obama's support for a failing auto industry into what he called a re-election bumper sticker message.
"It's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," the vice president said in a speech on Thursday.
Obama's campaign followed that Friday with a new web video questioning whether Romney would have taken the same path Obama did. If features a quote from a 2007 Romney interview in which he said it was not worth "moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."
That prompted Obama's 2008 opponent, Arizona's McCain, to issue a scathing statement in which he accused Obama of playing politics with the bin Laden killing and "diminishing the memory of September 11th."
"This is the same president who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't `spike the ball' after the touchdown," he said. "And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get re-elected."
