Top Mitt Romney surrogate Rudy Giuliani admitted that the GOP is accusing President Obama of covering up the violence that led to the death of an American ambassador in Libya for political gain.

During an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Monday, the former New York City mayor argued that the administration is purposely delaying investigations into the incident until after the election to “cover up” its own failures. But asked to substantiate the claim, Giuliani became agitated. He announced that he did not have to give Obama the benefit of the doubt or withhold judgment about the incident until a full investigation is complete because the president is a Democrat:

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN (HOST): The one thing I’m debating with you is just specifics. When you quote someone or you paraphrase them the only thing I ask is that you get that accurate. That’s all I ask.

GIULIANI: We’re also entitled to interpret what the president is saying without this, like, massive defense of everything he says.

Q: Do you think, foreign policy, including Benghazi is going to play a significant role in the election? Because my bias would be to think — it’s really interesting for us to talk about – but I think people are essentially going to vote on the economy.

GIULIANI: I think if, in fact, this becomes a question of the president’s lack of leadership, then it cuts into the economy as well. It’s beginning to become like that. The White house — the White House has been remarkably — The White House has fumbled this — whether it’s a deliberate cover-up or they’re making it look like a cover-up they have fumbled the ball four or five times here. Several contradictions. Excuse me if being the fact that I’m a Republican, I don’t give them as you do, all the benefit of the doubt.

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Republicans have a long history of politicizing acts of terrorism for political advantage: from using the 9/11 terrorist attacks to push the country into a war in Iraq, to portraying Democrats as terrorist sympathizers to score political victories in 2002 and 2004. Giuliani himself ran his presidential campaign on a “noun, verb and 9/11” and Romney’s first political instinct upon learning of violence in Libya was to accuse President Obama of apologizing for terrorism and sympathizing with the people who killed Amb. Christopher Stevens.

Mitt Romney campaign surrogate Rudy Giuliani suggested that the four Americas who died in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya last month were killed because the Obama administration was allegedly playing politics with the issue.

Giuliani told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer that the Americans at the consulate, including the late Ambassador Chris Stevens, “didn’t have to die if there were a competent reaction that wasn’t controlled by political spin”:

GIULIANI: The reality is, when you close your eyes to what’s going on you get attacked without recognizing you’re getting attacked. We should never have been attacked in Libya. The warnings were manifold. Instead of increasing security we decreased security. It is quite possible that the ambassador and the other three Americans didn’t have to die if there were a competent reaction that wasn’t controlled by political spin as opposed to done very very realistically.

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While it’s unclear what reaction to the Benghazi attack the Obama administration could have taken that would have retroactively saved the lives of Stevens and his colleagues, it’s conservatives like Giuliani who have been politicizing the incident, calling it Obama’s “Watergate” (the sixth Watergate-type scandal of Obama’s administration) and saying the president should be impeached.

Seeing that Mitt Romney’s campaign has struggled to substantively differentiate itself from President Obama’s Iran policy, it has turned to strange claims about making the military option in preventing Iran from getting a nuke more “credible.” It’s unclear what that actually means but Romney surrogate Rudy Giuliani gave shot at clearing it up this morning on CNN:

GIULIANI: He hasn’t said that he would use military force. The President keeps out two words from his vocabulary, two phrases, “I will use military force.” Like Ronald Reagan would have said. Direct. Clear.

HOST: Isn’t that the same as all options are on the table? [...]

GIULIANI: Here’s the difference, when you say all options are on the table you sound like Jimmy Carter and you keep the hostages. When you say, “I’m going to bomb you” … and if you say “I’m going to bomb you,” you look like Ronald Reagan and you release the hostages.

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Giuliani’s comments probably fall under that “loose talk of war” category the president recently referred to.

The Obama administration has indicated that it takes no option off the table in its effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including military force. Indeed, President Obama has said that he won’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration is aware, not only of the threat an Iranian nuclear weapon poses, but also the potential negative consequences of a military attack on Iran, such as those outlined in a new bipartisan expert report. And that, coupled with U.N., U.S. and Israeli assessments that Iran has not yet decided on whether to build a nuclear weapon, leads the administration to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, a track the it deems the “best and most permanent way” to solve the nuclear crisis.

Last Thursday, NBC News reported that the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian opposition group designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the State Department, conducted a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Former CIA official and visiting Georgetown professor Paul Pillar, citing the U.S. government’s definition of terrorism, observed that “with or without confirmation of details of this story, the assassinations are terrorism.” But numerous right-wing pundits and politicians here in the United States — many of whom regularly decry the use of terrorism as a means to political ends — have celebrated the MEK’s alleged attacks.

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that the MEK should be the Time Magazine “person of the year” if they were behind assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

An editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post said on Friday that the MEK deserves a Nobel Peace Prize:

Let’s be frank: Were the MeK to play the critical role in derailing an Iranian bomb, it would be far more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than a certain president of the United States we could mention.

And Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin justified the MEK’s action and Israel’s alleged role in financing, arming and training the group:

To those who say it is immoral to use those who have employed terrorism, the only reply can be that it would be far worse for Israel’s government to allow such scruples to prevent them from carrying out actions that might stop the Iranians from going nuclear.

Noticeably, the MEK’s defenders chose not to address the NBC report’s other major disclosure. The MEK reportedly worked with Ramzi Yousef, the terrorist behind the first attack on the World Trade Center, to bomb an Iranian shrine, killing at least 26 people.

The NBC report did not go on to substantiate any direct links between the Israeli government and the assassination campaign, and the MEK denied any involvement in the attacks.

Indeed, the MEK’s American supporters find themselves in the increasingly difficult position of lobbying to remove the organization from the State Department’s terror list while openly celebrating the group’s involvement in terrorist attacks.