Obama and Romney battle in second U.S. presidential debate

October 19, 2012

United States president Barack Obama criticized his presidential challenger Mitt Romney over his response to the killing of the U.S ambassador to Libya on Tuesday in the second of three presidential debates. At the debate in, New York, President Obama was critical of Mr Romney for trying to score "political points" from the incident.

"While we were still dealing with our diplomats being threatened, Governor Romney put out a press release, trying to make political points, and that's not how a commander-in-chief operates" Obama said, referring to Romney's initial response to the incident before the full details were known of what had happened.

Mr Obama faced criticism for the apparent lack of security at the U.S Consulate in. Tuesday, U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she took responsibility for the failure in security at the counsulate, which led to the ambassador's death.

Elsewhere in the debate, there was controversy as moderator appeared to side with President Obama when Mr Romney said that President Obama was not quick enough to call the killing of the ambassador "terrorism". "He did, in fact, sir," Crowley said, siding with Obama. On the day of the attack, President Obama actually said "...no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation". Despite that comment, some of President Obama's top aides had initially attributed the killing to the film  which led to protests elsewhere in the Middle East. The rest of the debate was mostly dominated by the economy, jobs and taxes.

The next debate is scheduled to take place on October 22 at in Florida. The candidates will be seeking to clinch the votes of the millions of undecided voters.