Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday questioned whether the Obama administration had shifted its account of what caused the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya "because it ran counter to their campaign narrative."
"One of the narratives that the Obama campaign has laid out is that bin Laden is dead, they bragged about that forever, and that Al Qaeda is in retreat," Rubio said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "And you start to wonder, that they basically say, do not allow any story to emerge that counters that narrative. Is that why for two weeks they told us that the Libyan incident in Benghazi was a popular uprising and not a terrorist attack because it ran counter to their campaign narrative?
"I hope that that's not true but that's what you start to wonder about," the Florida senator and Mitt Romney campaign surrogate continued.
Republicans have questioned whether the administration turned down requests for heightened security to return to an image of normalcy in Libya after that country's violent civil war. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Friday asked the White House to provide more details on security decisions before the Sept. 11 attack that claimed four American lives.
In his interview on CBS, Rubio also offered sharp criticisms of many other Obama administration foreign policy decisions, ahead of Monday's third presidential debate, which will focus on international affairs and defense.
Rubio attacked President Obama over Iran and criticized him for not lining up "with the Green Revolution there." By not doing so, Rubio charged that Iran today lacks an organized opposition because they were "completely demoralized in its early days of this rebellion by the president's lack of engagement."
"He said he wasn't going to get involved in Iran's sovereignty and the result has been disastrous," he said.
The president's policy towards Cuba was another issue Rubio took Obama to task for. He called the "people to people" cultural exchange trips to Cuba as "tourism trips" where people "go over there for salsa dancing and cigar rolling lessons and all it is a source of hard currency for the Castro regime."
"There are no political freedoms in Cuba and I think sadly over the last four years the cause of freedom in Cuba has been hurt by these additional trips... and remittances and providing hard currency for that regime," he said.
