Romney backtracks criticism

WAYNE, Pa. – Two weeks after sharply criticizing the Obama administration for its handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, Mitt Romney said Friday that it was “premature” to cast judgment on how his Democratic rival handled the developments in Libya and said he would wait for the results of an investigation.

It was a clear tonal shift on the part of the Republican presidential nominee.

As the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were unfolding earlier this month, Romney released a late-night statement taking issue with a statement from U.S. diplomats in Cairo. Romney’s release went out before he knew that the attacks in Libya had taken the lives of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Romney was much more measured during an impromptu news conference Friday on his plane as he traveled from a campaign rally in Wayne, Pa.

“I think with the investigation ongoing it would be premature to describe precisely what the administration did correctly or incorrectly,” Romney told reporters on the plane. “There are a wide array of reports about warnings, and whether they were heeded – we’ll find out whether that was the case or that was not the case.”

Los Angeles Times