Obama campaign hammers Romney over 'war-like' Bush foreign policy

Washington, Oct. 9 (ANI): President Barack Obama's campaign has accused Republican rival Mitt Romney of wanting to pursue the same kind of foreign policy as former president George Bush that led the US into wars.

The president's campaign claimed that Romney is positioning himself to the right of Bush on foreign policy.

According to the Guardian, extracts of Romney's speech mainly outlined his position on the Middle East, provoking claims that he has been repeatedly shifting his line on Libya, Syria, the Palestinian territories and Iran.

On Syria, Romney and his team have offered competing views on how far or how little the US should become involved.

Unlike the Obama administration, which has so far resisted allowing rebels to receive arms capable of countering jets, tanks and helicopters, Romney is proposing that US allies in the Middle East lift those restrictions and start supplying the rebels with the arms they have been asking for, the report added.

The Obama campaign issued an ad saying Romney had already failed the commander-in-chief test, citing his accident-prone tour of the UK, Israel and Poland in the summer and various comments since then.

The Obama team released a 'memo' from two of its foreign policy advisers, Michele Flournoy and Colin Kahl, saying that Romney's speech is an attempt to reboot his foreign policy, but that "doesn't change the fact that he's repeatedly taken positions outside the mainstream and often to the right of even George Bush".

"This is not surprising, given that Romney is advised by the same people who were responsible for some of the worst foreign policy failures in American history, including the Iraq war. And now he wants to take us back to the same with-us-or-against-us approach that got us into wars without getting us out of them," the pair add.

Flournoy and Kahl said Romney had so far failed to provide details on the big foreign policy issues, such as what he would do differently from Obama in dealing with Iran's alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. (ANI)