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\f0\fs36 \cf0 \cb2 BOB SCHIEFFER: Good evening from the campus of Lynn University here in

Boca Raton, Florida. This is the fourth and last debate of the 2012 campaign, brought

to you by the Commission on Presidential Debates. This one's on foreign policy. I'm Bob

Schieffer of CBS News. The questions are mine, and I have not shared them with the candidates

or their aides. The audience has taken a vow of silence -

no applause, no reaction of any kind except right now when we welcome President Barack

Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. (Sustained cheers, applause.) Gentlemen, your campaigns

have agreed to certain rules and they are simple. They have asked me to divide the evening

into segments. I'll pose a question at the beginning of each segment. You will each

have two minutes to respond, and then we will have a general discussion until we move to

the next segment. Tonight's debate, as both of your know,

comes on the 50th anniversary of the night that President Kennedy told the world that

the Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba - perhaps the closest we've

ever come to nuclear war. And it is a sobering reminder that every president faces at some

point an unexpected threat to our national security from abroad. So let's begin.

The first segment is the challenge of a changing Middle East and the new face of terrorism.

I'm going to put this into two segments, so you'll have two topic questions within

this one segment on that subject. The first question, and it concerns Libya, the controversy

over what happened there continues. Four Americans are dead, including an American ambassador.

Questions remain. What happened? What caused it? Was it spontaneous?

Was it an intelligence failure? Was it a policy failure? Was there an attempt to mislead people

about what really happened? Governor Romney, you said this was an example

of an American policy in the Middle East that is unraveling before our very eyes. I'd

like to hear each of you give your thoughts on that.

Governor Romney, you won the toss. You go first.

MITT ROMNEY: Thank you, Bob, and thank you for agreeing to moderate this debate this

evening. Thank you to Lynn University for welcoming us here, and Mr. President, it's

good to be with you again. We were together at a humorous event a little earlier, and

it's nice to maybe be funny this time not on purpose. We'll see what happens. (Laughter.)

This is obviously an area of great concern to the entire world and to America in particular,

which is to see a - a complete change in the - the - the structure and the -

the environment in the Middle East. With the Arab Spring came a great deal of hope that

there would be a change towards more moderation and opportunity for greater participation

on the part of women and - and public life and in economic life in the Middle East. But

instead we've seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events. Of course,

we see in Syria 30,000 civilians having been killed by the military there. We see in -

in - in Libya an attack apparently by - well, I think we know now by terrorists of

some kind against - against our people there, four people dead. Our hearts and minds

go to them. Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali, by al-Qaida-type individuals.

We have in - in Egypt a Muslim Brotherhood president.

And so what we're seeing is a - a - a pretty dramatic reversal in the kind of

hopes we had for that region. Of course, the greatest threat of all is Iran, four years

closer to a nuclear weapon. And - and we're going to have to recognize that we have to

do as the president has done. I congratulate him on - on taking out Osama bin Laden

and going after the leadership in al-Qaida. But we can't kill our way out of this mess.

We're - we're going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy

to help the - the world of Islam and - and other parts of the world reject this radical

violent extremism which is - it's really not on the run. It's certainly not hiding.

This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous

threat to our friends, to the world, to America long term, and we must have a comprehensive

strategy to help reject this kind of extremism. MR. SCHIEFFER: Mr. President.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, my first job as commander in chief, Bob, is to keep the American people

safe, and that's what we've done over the last four years. We ended the war in Iraq,

refocused our attention on those who actually killed us on 9/11. And as a consequence, al-Qaida's

core leadership has been decimated. In addition, we're now able to transition

out of Afghanistan in a responsible way, making sure that Afghans take responsibility for

their own security, and that allows us also to rebuild alliances and make friends around

the world to combat future threats. Now, with respect to Libya, as I indicated in the last

debate, when we received that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one,

we did everything we could to secure those Americans who were still in harm's way;

number two, that we would investigate exactly what happened; and number three, most importantly,

that we would go after those who killed Americans, and we would bring them to justice, and that's

exactly what we're going to do. But I think it's important to step back

and think about what happened in Libya. Now, keep in mind that I and Americans took leadership

in organizing an international coalition that made sure that we were able to - without

putting troops on the ground, at the cost of less than what we spent in two weeks in

Iraq - liberate a country that had been under the yoke of dictatorship for 40 years,

got rid of a despot who had killed Americans. And as a consequence, despite this tragedy,

you had tens of thousands of Libyans after the events in Benghazi marching and saying,

America's our friend. We stand with them. Now that represents the opportunity we have

to take advantage of. And you know, Governor Romney, I'm glad that you agree that we

have been successful in going after al-Qaida, but I have to tell you that, you know, your

strategy previously has been one that has been all over the map and is not designed

to keep Americans safe or to build on the opportunities that exist in the Middle East.

MR. ROMNEY: Well, my strategy's pretty straightforward, which is to go after the

bad guys, to make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to - to kill them, to

take them out of the picture. But my strategy is broader than - than that. That's

- that's important, of course, but the key that we're going to have to pursue

is a - is a pathway to - to get the Muslim world to be able to reject extremism

on its own. We don't want another Iraq. We don't want another Afghanistan. That's

not the right course for us. The right course for us is to make sure that we go after the

- the people who are leaders of these various anti-American groups and these - these

jihadists, but also help the Muslim world. And how we do that? A group of Arab scholars

came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the - the world reject

these - these terrorists. And the answer they came up was this.

One, more economic development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment

and that of our friends - we should coordinate it to make sure that we - we push back

and give them more economic development. Number two, better education.

Number three, gender equality. Number four, the rule of law. We have to help

these nations create civil societies. But what's been happening over the last

couple years as we watched this tumult in the Middle East, this rising tide of chaos

occur, you see al-Qaida rushing in, you see other jihadist groups rushing in.

And - and they're throughout many nations of the Middle East.

It's wonderful that Libya seems to be making some progress, despite this terrible tragedy,

but next door, of course, we have Egypt. Libya's 6 million population, Egypt 80 million population.

We want - we want to make sure that we're seeing progress throughout the Middle East.

With Mali now having North Mali taken over by al-Qaida, with Syria having Assad continuing

to - or to kill - to murder his own people, this is a region in tumult. And of

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The Complete Final Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney