John McCain still whining about 'politicizing' Mitt Romney's opposition to bin Laden raid strategy

John McCain's 2008 Republican convention deployed 9/11 imagery (Mike Segar/Reuters) John McCain last night on Fox, still whining about Osama bin Laden (transcript via NEXIS):

Any president of the United States, given that information, would have done the same thing, but I give great credit to the president.

The point is, though, do you use that in political campaigns to attack your opponent? Mitt Romney would have done the exact same thing. I am confident. And any leader would have.

So, to say that Mitt Romney wouldn't have, I mean, is politicizing what -- an event that all Americans applauded enormously.

Uh, nobody is accusing Mitt Romney of failing to applaud the Osama bin Laden killing. Nobody is saying that he's a monster. We're just saying that he was wrong when he opposed President Obama's strategy on how to get bin Laden.

And please, spare us the hypercritical whining about politicizing politics. Remember when Osama bin Laden released a video tape on the eve of the 2004 election? McCain hailed it as a boon to George W. Bush's reelection campaign:

U.S. Sen. John McCain, campaigning in southwestern Connecticut on Saturday, said Osama bin Laden's video message to Americans will likely energize President Bush's re-election campaign.

'I think it's very helpful to President Bush,' said McCain, R-Ariz., while stumping in Stamford for U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays. 'It focuses America's attention on the war on terrorism. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I think it does have an effect.'

And as you can see in the picture at the top of this post, John McCain's 2008 Republican National Convention used imagery from 9/11 to support their campaign. So, not shockingly, McCain is full of it when he whines about politicizing politics.

But the larger point here is that the reason why this is an appropriate issue to discuss is that there is'or at least, there was'a real and substantive policy difference between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. As a candidate for president, Obama supported pursuing high-value al Qaeda targets like Osama bin Laden wherever they might be'even if that meant entering Pakistan without Pakistan's support. Mitt Romney attacked that position on the campaign trail'and so did John McCain.

So while they say that they would have done the same thing as President Obama now that Obama's strategy succeeded, back when this was a debate on the campaign trail, they made it clear that they wouldn't have followed his approach. So unless Mitt Romney can prove he flip-flopped before May 2011, it's entirely fair to say that if he had been president, Osama bin Laden would not have been brought to justice one year ago. Maybe pointing that out is politics, but this is an election. There's consequences to being wrong.