Fact check,
During the third and final presidential debate Monday night, President Obama and Mitt Romney disputed an array of statements on foreign policy. Here are a few worth a deeper look:
Defense spending
Claim: Obama said Romney wants to add $2 trillion in spending the military hasn’t asked for and that defense spending has increased every year he has been president.
The facts: Obama’s claim about Romney’s increase is accurate; his statement that budgets have increased is not.
Romney calls for spending a minimum of 4% of the nation’s gross domestic product on defense. Over 10 years, that would amount to about $2 trillion more for the Pentagon than Obama has budgeted over the same period.
The 2013 Pentagon base budget — excluding costs for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — as proposed by Obama declines by $5 billion compared with 2012, according to the Pentagon’s comptroller.
Syria
Claim: Obama said that Romney said he would provide heavy arms to Syrian rebels.
The facts: In an Oct. 8 speech, Romney said he “will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition (in Syria) who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat (President Bashar) Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.”
Libya
Claim: Obama said Romney suggested that getting rid of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya was “mission creep.”
The facts: “What we are watching in real time is another example of mission creep and mission muddle,” Romney wrote in an April 21, 2011, National Review article. Romney endorsed the “specific, limited mission” of a no-fly zone to protect civilians from the Gadhafi regime, but he said Obama owed Americans a better explanation of why he had changed his position to seek the dictator’s ouster.
After Gadhafi was killed by rebel forces, Romney said, “The world is a better place with Gadhafi gone.”
The ‘apology tour’
Claim: Romney said Obama went on “an apology tour of going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America.”
The facts: The use of the term “apology tour” to describe Obama’s April 2009 foreign visits appears to have started with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
In his book, Romney cited a number of speeches in which he said Obama apologized: “The United States certainly shares blame” for the global banking meltdown, Obama told the French. The George W. Bush administration had “lowered our standing in the world,” he told the English. And to the Turkish parliament, he said, “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history,” which included slavery, segregation and treatment of American Indians.
Even so, none of his foreign speeches included what many people would consider an essential element of an apology: the words “we’re sorry.” That’s why Obama is correct that professional fact-checkers have rated the statement as untrue.
Iraq
Claim: Obama said Romney wanted to leave troops in Iraq after Dec. 31, 2011, a claim Romney denied.
The facts: When the U.S. government was trying to secure a status of forces agreement last year with the Iraqi government that would have allowed some U.S. troops to remain in the country, Romney said more U.S. troops should remain than Obama was proposing.
Mali
Claim: Romney, citing a litany of Middle East hotspots, said northern Mali “has been taken over by al- Qaeda-type individuals.”
The facts: Mali, an African nation of 14 million people in the western Sahara desert, has been embroiled in conflict this year as insurgent groups have fought for independence. The Economic Community of West African States has identified at least three of the groups as having links with alQaeda. Intelligence officials say the groups may also have ties to insurgent groups in Algeria and Libya. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday, “Free democratic states cannot accept international terrorism gaining a safe refuge in” northern Mali.