Has the Obama campaign been unfair in its suggestion that Mitt Romney would not have gone after bin Laden the way the president did? Many pundits have said so, and Romney himself complained about it yesterday.

At issue is a web ad the Obama campaign put out last week that contains a quote Romney gave to AP reporter Liz Sidoti in 2007: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” The charge is that the quote was taken out of context. “The valid Romney observation that defeating al Qaeda would require a comprehensive strategy, not one limited to hunting down a single man, got distorted by the Obama scriptwriters into a hesitation to pursue Bin Laden” writes former Bush adviser Peter Feaver. Politifact makes the same argument: “The Obama campaign is right that Romney used those words, but by cherry-picking them, it glosses over comments describing his broader approach. Romney said he wanted to pursue all of al-Qaida, not just its leaders.”

But that is not what Romney said.