Sen. Kerry accuses Romney of ‘aggressive’ and ‘inaccurate’ attack on Obama over Iran policy

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Tuesday suggested GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney was guilty of dispelling "inaccurate… sloganeering and sound bites” in an op-ed he wrote slamming President Obama’s Iran policy.

"I was trouble, deeply troubled to read an op-ed today in the Washington Post by.... Mitt Romney," said Kerry.  "It was an attack on the president's Iran policy and it was as inaccurate as it was aggressive." 

In the op-ed published in the Washington Post on Tuesday Romney warned, "Islamic fanatics… are racing to build a nuclear bomb" and called the president  "America’s most feckless president since Carter."

But Kerry on Tuesday pointed to the administration's bold decision to go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan as proof that Obama was nothing like how Romney described him. 

"He authorized the gutsy and dangerous job in Pakistan that finally killed Osama bin Laden…I don't know if Mitt Romney has checked the definition of the word feckless lately but that ain’t it,” he said.  

Kerry went on to accuse Romney of seizing a tense moment in the escalating situation with Iran, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Washington DC, to try to gain a jump start against President Obama.

"Every candidate for the Oval Office as a right to attack the president, but particularly this week… at a moment when so much is on the line... we all ought to remember the nuclear issue with Iran is a deadly serious business that should invite sobriety and serious-minded solutions, not sloganeering and sound bites," he said. 

“[M]r. Romney needs to understand what is going on if he plans to run for president,” he concluded. 

---