From Special Report with Bret Baier | Thursday, September 13, 2012
On Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement today regarding the attacks on American embassies throughout the Middle East and North Africa this week:
It looks as if the administration has no idea what it thinks about what has just happened. We had that statement coming out of the embassy in Cairo, which was a disgraceful apology. And Romney attacks it — the White House hadn’t said anything — but after the Romney attack, the State Department denies it or disavows it [and] the White House does.
And then, of course, everybody jumps on Romney because he criticized it. He was absolutely right in attacking it.
When we heard from Secretary of State Clinton, she basically repeated the apology: I oppose all this… We don’t have any sympathy with… we deplore… I find it disgusting…
The worst line in the clip that you showed was this — where she said that “there are different views around the world about the outer limits of free speech.” Why is she engaging in a disquisition on free speech with the mob? The implication here is that perhaps the mob is right, that we ought to be suppressing anything that offends Islam.
This in a nation that when somebody puts a crucifix in bottle of urine it ends up in a museum– we allow all kinds of expression. But perhaps we ought to make an exception in the case of Islam? This is absurd.
She ought to be speaking to the heads of state, to the State Department equivalents in the other states and say: You speak with your mob, you talk to them about this — and you defend our embassies.
I find this [Clinton’s statement] a return to the sentiment of the embassy statement two days ago. I think they are totally in meltdown over at the State Department.
On the broader significance of the attacks:
What we are seeing on that screen [showing further rioting in Cairo near the US embassy] is the meltdown, the collapse of the Obama policy on the Muslim world.
The irony is that it began in Cairo, in the same place [as the riots] — the speech he made at the beginning of his presidency in which he said he wanted a “new beginning” with “mutual respect,” implying that under other presidents, particularly Bush, there was a lack of mutual respect, which was an insult to the United States which had gone to war six times in the last 20 years on behalf of oppressed Muslims…..
So to imply that we somehow had mistreated Muslims, which was the premise of his speech, and how the Iraq war had inflamed the Arab world against us — well, there was no storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo in those days.
What we’re seeing now is Al Qaedastan developing in Libya, a meltdown of our relations with Egypt… riots in Yemen, attacks on our embassy in Tunisia….These are the fruits of apology and retreat and lack of confidence in our own principles.