Cruz: You Know, Marco Rubio's Kinda Responsible for Benghazi, Too

Cruz tries positioning himself as the Middle Way on interventionism, not an isolationist, but not a raring to jump into every fight like McCain, either.

"Senator Rubio emphatically supported Hillary Clinton in toppling [Muammar] Qaddafi in Libya. I think that made no sense," Cruz told Bloomberg Politics in a wide-ranging and exclusive interview during a campaign swing through Iowa. He argued that the 2011 bombings that toppled the Libyan leader didn't help the fight against terrorists. "Qaddafi was a bad man, he had a horrible human rights record. And yet ... he had become a significant ally in fighting radical Islamic terrorism."

"The terrorist attack that occurred in Benghazi was a direct result of that massive foreign policy blunder," Cruz said during a drive eastward from a town-hall event near Iowa City to another in the town of Clinton.

Cruz also attacked Rubio's judgment on both Egypt and the civil war in Syria, remarking about the last, "we have no dog in that fight." I'm not really certain what Cruz means -- does he mean we did not have a dog in that fight, but do now with the rise of ISIS, or does he mean to rule out "military adventurism" there?

I imagine actually means the former but is willing to use a little strategic ambiguity to draw in any Paul-type anti-interventionists.

Rubio has meanwhile been attacking Cruz as "soft" on national security, highlighting Cruz's support for the stupidly named USA FREEDOM Act, which de-authorizes mass collection of phone data. Rubio, meanwhile, supported the old policy of mass collection.

posted by Ace at 12:05 PM

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