Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney doesn’t seem to understand the myriad considerations that went into President Obama’s decision to carry out the special operations raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. An ad put out by the Obama re-election campaign highlighting the president’s decision to strike into Pakistani territory to kill Bin Laden sparked a furor by questioning whether Romney would have made the same call.

Since the ad appeared, Romney, his surrogates, and so-called independent groups like the nouvelle swift-boaters have all rehashed the same dubious line in Romney’s defense: That any American president (or “any thinking American“) would have ordered the bin Laden raid. Just last night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show, Romney yet again issued this defense:

ROMNEY: But if the president wants to remind people of his decision, well, that’s entirely appropriate. But I think it was a big mistake for the president to try to make in this a political event by suggesting that I would not have done the same thing. I mean, frankly, Sean, almost any American in the position of presidency hearing that Osama bin Laden could have been taken out would have certainly pressed the button and said: get rid of the guy.

HANNITY: Oh, absolutely.

ROMNEY: And of course I would have.

Watch the video:

However, Romney and his allies’ repeated responses to the ad that “any thinking American” would have ordered the raid don’t account for the actual events surrounding Obama’s call.

Romney assumes that Obama was 100 percent sure bin Laden was at the compound in Pakistan. However, the intelligence was far from certain:

“There wasn’t any direct evidence that he was there. It was all circumstantial.” — Robert Gates

“The circumstantial case of Iraq having WMD (weapons of mass destruction) was actually stronger than the circumstantial case that bin Laden is living in the Abbottabad compound.” — CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell

“Ultimately, it was a 50/50 proposition as to whether this was actually bin Laden.” — President Obama

Romney thinks that anyone would have ordered the raid based on his assumption that bin Laden’s whereabouts were known. In fact, Vice President Biden and Robert Gates opposed a special operations assault that the president ultimately decided on, particularly because of uncertainty as to whether bin Laden was at the compound.

Romney claimed that “we haven’t heard all the different military options there were” for the bin Laden raid. But various reports have outlined a number of courses of action Obama could have taken. “Most were variations of either a JSOC raid or an airstrike. Some versions included cooperating with the Pakistani military; some did not,” the New Yorker reported.

In an analogous choice in 2005, George W. Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided not to strike at senior Al Qaeda commanders in Pakistan because of the potential risk to relations with the notoriously sensitive country. When Obama said in his first presidential campaign that he would strike in Pakistan to get bin Laden, McCain criticized him as irresponsible. Romney echoed this concern when he said in August 2007, “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours.”

After arriving in Afghanistan’s capitol Kabul to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama took to the American airwaves to explain the agreement and his broader Afghanistan strategy to the U.S. A few critics on the right — prone to faulting Obama for his every move — sought to bash the president. “Clearly this trip is campaign-related,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), admonishing Obama for a supposed “attempt to shore up his national security credentials” in the 2012 campaign.

But Inhofe’s blatantly political shot is being undermined by members of his own party and their ideological allies, who have either praised Obama or stuck to criticizing the strategy. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash before the speech if he viewed the trip as “spiking the football” for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has been a critic of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, said, “No, I don’t view it as that.” He also lauded the trip and the strategic agreement:

MCCAIN: I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s always good when the president goes to where young men and women are in harm’s way.

And I think that many of us who have been involved in Afghanistan are very supportive of the strategic partnership agreement, which I’m sure he’ll be talking about, and we think the agreement is good. We obviously would like to know the details.

BASH: …Do you think that this trip is also part of his political campaign?

MCCAIN: No, I can’t accuse the president of that.

Appearing separately on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Homeland Security Committee chair Rep. Peter King (R-NY) also supported the trip, though he reserved judgement on the agreement until he could view it in detail. King said, “(H)is visit to Afghanistan is perfectly right. I applaud him for doing it.” The Congressman went on:

KING: Well, as president and commander-in-chief, I applaud him being in Afghanistan. I think it’s important for the troops to see the president and certainly after all of these years of fighting where the troops have done such heroic work and did such an outstanding job. I think it’s important for the president to be there and signing the agreement with President Karzai.

…I think it is always very good when the president of the United States can visit a war zone, especially on such a key moment as this.

Watch clips of the interviews with McCain and King:

McCain and King aren’t the only Republicans praising Obama’s trip. Romney foreign policy adviser Max Boot wrote that “substance of the speech” was “somber and serious and largely free of election-year politicking.” Romney himself released a statement that said: “I am pleased that President Obama has returned to Afghanistan. Our troops and the American people deserve to hear from our President about what is at stake in this war.”

President Obama’s campaign, in a new web video touting the decision to get Osama bin Laden, called attention to Mitt Romney’s claim in 2007 that Obama was wrong to say that he would strike al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan. “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth” trying to get bin Laden, Romney said at the time.

Romney’s push back is that anyone would have made the same decision that Obama made in ordering the raid on bin Laden’s compound last year. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” Romney said today. One problem with that argument is that Vice President Biden and then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates advised Obama against taking the course he chose on the bin Laden raid.

Top Romney surrogate John McCain (R-AZ) used a similar line last night on Fox News. “I say any president, Jimmy Carter, anybody, any president would have obviously under those circumstances done the same thing,” McCain said. When host Bill O’Reilly pointed out that Biden would not have, McCain’s response was basically, “eh, anybody but Biden”:

MCCAIN: Biden is the same one that said we should divide Iraq into three countries. Biden is the same one that said Desert Storm would be another Vietnam. Biden has — has been consistently wrong on every national security issue that I’ve been involved in in the last 20 years or so. So, I wouldn’t use Biden as a bellwether.

Watch the clip:

So Biden should not be brought into this debate because he may have gotten some things wrong. If that’s the measure, than McCain has been irrelevant for many, many years.

In their latest push for U.S. military involvement in the Syrian conflict, three of the most hawkish Senators today introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. help arm the Syrian rebels through Arab allies. Suggesting support for regional efforts to arm the opposition, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) called for condemnation of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who for more than a year has cracked down with the full force of his military against anti-government demonstrators and rebels.

ABC News described the Senators’ bill:

The resolution supports calls by Arab leaders to provide the Syrian people with weapons and other material support and calls on President Obama to work closely with regional partners to “implement these efforts effectively.”

At a press conference, Lieberman said:

We in the United States have both a moral and strategic reason to support their efforts by at least giving them the means with which to defend themselves.

The Hill reports that the McCain-Graham-Lieberman resolution is likely to be merged with another by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) calling for a U.S. government report examining the rebels and gleaning information about its different factions. Other aspects of the resolutions also overlap. The Hill went on to expand on the call to support the Syrian opposition’s self-defense:

That support would likely come in the form of weapons and ammunition for anti-Assad forces. McCain declined to comment on what specific weapons could shipped to rebel troops in the country.

But the Arizona Republicans said those arms could be funneled through the same lines that the “non-lethal” supplies being sent to Syria by the U.S. and Turkey.

The Hill also noted that McCain, Lieberman and Graham did not call in their resolution for airstrikes against Syria. Earlier this month, McCain voiced support for U.S. air strikes against Assad’s regime aimed at helping the rebels topple it. Lieberman and Graham almost immediately followed McCain’s lead.

But those sorts of actions are deeply unpopular among Americans. A Fox News poll released on March 15 said 68 percent of those surveyed opposed air strikes aimed at overthrowing the country, and only 19 percent supported such a strategy. A slim majority opposed and 37 supported air strikes narrowly limited to protecting anti-government rebels. Even the U.S. arming the rebels was unpopular: 64 percent of respondents opposed it, with a quarter of them supporting it.

According to the Hill, “Lieberman said it was decided to exclude the airstrikes demand from the resolution, fearing it would sap bipartisan support for the legislation among rank-and-file senators.”

Mitt Romney has been attacking President Obama for a comment he made to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev that he’d be more “flexible” on issues like missile defense after this year’s presidential election. Romney called the comments “very, very troubling,” because Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” While some of Obama’s political opponents are piling on, House Speaker John Boehner tried to rein in the attacks. “While the president is overseas I think it’s appropriate that people not be critical of him or our country,” he said.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who attacked then-senator Obama for political gain while he was abroad during the 2008 presidential campaign — is choosing to ignore the Republican House Speaker on national security grounds. “I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner,” McCain said on Fox News this morning, because, he said, “this is a very serious issue.” And when asked if he thinks, as Romney does, that Russia is America’s “number one foe,” the Arizona senator wouldn’t go that far: “I think in many respects”:

MCCAIN: I understand John Boehner’s point and I respect that but this is a very serious issue. No matter where the president is, if he makes a statement that I think could endanger the United States national security interests, I have to respond no matter where the president of the United States is. [...] All I can say is I respectfully disagree with Speaker Boehner. [...]

KILMEADE: Do you think they [Russia] are our geopolitical foe?

MCCAIN: I think in many respects, look at what they’re doing in Syria right now, they’re supplying arms and equipment to Bashar Assad while he slaughters and massacres his own people. Look at — they continue to prop up North Korea…and obviously now there is a president for life.

Watch the clip:

This isn’t the first time McCain has differed with Romney on a foreign policy issue. The former Massachusetts governor said that under no condition should the United States negotiate with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan. However, McCain recently disagreed. “I think it’s important to have talks wherever you can,” he said.

Medvedev also criticized Romney yesterday. “I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasings such as ‘No. 1 enemy.’ It is very reminiscent of Hollywood in a certain period of history,” the Russian president said, adding, “My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time. It is 2012, not the mid-1970s.”

McCain saw Medvedev’s comment as meaning that Russia is in the tank for Obama. “They obviously want president Obama reelected, that’s pretty clear,” McCain told the Hill newspaper.