Intel Report: Truth Squad

November 2, 2012 8:05:36 AM PDT
You're not alone if you're not sure whether you can believe all of the claims made during the presidential debate.

The Truth Squad's first fact check was Governor Romney's oft-stated accusation that President Obama began his term by touring the Middle East and apologizing for America. That blunt assertion has been ruled false by numerous fact-checking organizations that have examined Mr. Obama's 2009 foreign speeches, even though the give and take continued Monday night.

The president then made one of his favorite foreign policy claims against Governor Romney: that Mr. Romney has said he would not move "heaven and earth to get the Al Aaeda patriarch Osama Bin Laden." A review of the full record shows this too is false.

In 2007, while Romney did say that it wasn't worth moving heaven and earth and billions of dollars to get one person, the rest of his statement was in support of a broad strategy to defeat all violent Islamists.

On one occasion Monday night, Mr. Romney did the job of the Truth Squad, saying that America can't kill our way out of trouble in the middle east. But that has to be declared false, based on what Mr. Romney said just five minutes later. "My strategy is simple, go after the bad guys, kill them," he said.

Finally, back to the president. When the subject turned to china, Mr. Obama said that the Chinese has flooded the United States with cheap tires and that he put a stop to it and created jobs. That is false, according to the figures. In 2009, the administration placed an import tariff on Chinese tires, but it backfired; and cost American consumers a billion dollars and the tariff was allowed to expire last month.

In one of the many diversions to domestic issues, Mr. Romney touted that when he was governor top high school students got free in-state college tuition. The president interrupted, telling Romney it happened before he took office in Massachusetts. Actually, Romney was right. The John and Abigail Adams scholarship program began in 2004 when Romney was governor.

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