Yahoo.com : US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens killed in consulate attack in Benghazi

[twa]

Where was Stevens 'based' ???
What about his security team that traveled with him that was withdrawn?
What kind of fool believes a single US security person supervising some locals = adequate security in direct opposition to the commanders and Ambassador's opinions?

I have no problem at all believing Joe and Obama were not informed.

[visionary]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/us/cli...html?hpt=hp_t1

Clinton: 'I take responsibility' for security ahead of Benghazi attack

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the buck stops with her when it comes to who is to blame for security ahead of a deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

"I take responsibility" for what happened on September 11, Clinton said in an interview with CNN's Elise Labott soon after arriving in Lima, Peru, for a visit. The interview, one of a series given to U.S. television networks Monday night, was the first she has given about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Clinton insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.

"I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she added, noting that it is close to the election.

[twa]

don't think this has been posted

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/201...HRSV_h.twitter

background briefing on the event

[mikered30]

Hillary took one for the team.

[visionary]

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2...er-138795.html

Debate questioner: Obama gave me private Libya answer

“After the debate, the president came over to me and spent about two minutes with me privately,” says the 61-year-old Ladka, who works at Global Telecom Supply in Mineola, N.Y. According to Ladka, Obama gave him ”more information about why he delayed calling the attack a ter[r]orist attack.” ...The rationale for the delay, Obama explained to Ladka, was to make sure that the “intelligence he was acting on was real intelligence and not disinformation,” recalls Ladka.

As to Ladka’s question about who turned down the Benghazi security requests and why, Obama reportedly told him that “releasing the individual names of anyone in the State Department would really put them at risk,” Ladka says.

[twa]

Real intelligence vs disinformation

the video didn't clue him in?...it is not like he is expected to name the attackers or anything

[visionary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/wo...byans-say.html

Libya Singles Out Islamist as a Commander in Consulate Attack, Libyans Say

Libyan authorities have singled out Ahmed Abu Khattala, a leader of the Benghazi-based Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, as a commander in the attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, last month, Libyans involved in the investigation said on Wednesday.

The identity and motivation of the assailants has become an intense flash point in the American presidential campaign. Republicans have sought to tie the attack to Al Qaeda to counter President Obama’s claim that by killing Osama bin Laden and other leaders his administration had crippled the group; Mr. Abu Khattala and Ansar al-Sharia share Al Qaeda’s puritanism and militancy, but operate independently and focus only on Libya rather than on a global jihad against the West.

But Mr. Abu Khattala’s exact role, or how much of the leadership he shared with others, is not yet clear. His leadership would not rule out participation or encouragement by militants connected to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian Islamic insurgency that adopted the name of Bin Laden’s group a few years ago to bolster its image, but has so far avoided attacks on Western interests.

Like the other leaders of the brigade or fighters seen in the attack, Mr. Abu Khattala remains at large and has not yet been questioned. The authorities in Tripoli do not yet command an effective army or police force, and members of the recently elected Parliament have acknowledged with frustration that their government’s limited power has shackled their ability to pursue the attackers. The government typically relies on self-formed local militias to act as law enforcement, and the Benghazi area militias appear reluctant to enter a potentially bloody fight against another local group, like Ansar al-Sharia, to track down Mr. Abu Khattala.

[skinsfan_1215]

Wonder if a mini-October surprise for Obama would be killing the leader that orchestrated the attack...

[visionary]

Wonder if a mini-October surprise for Obama would be killing the leader that orchestrated the attack...

That could be a surprise in more ways than one, depending on how it's handled....

[visionary]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,0,95514.story

No evidence found of Al Qaeda role in Libya attack

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.

The circumstances of the Sept. 11 attack have become a matter of heated political debate, with President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney clashing in their debate Tuesday about when Obama termed the assault an act of terrorism. But the emerging picture painted by intelligence officials and witnesses differs from the assertions of both sides.

Republicans have zeroed in on possible Al Qaeda ties to the Sept. 11 attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and have criticized the Obama administration for not saying early on that it was an act of terrorism. But after five weeks of investigation, U.S. intelligence agencies say they have found no evidence of Al Qaeda participation.

Rice has been widely criticized for comments she made on a round of talk show appearances Sept. 16, when she said the attack appeared to have stemmed from a protest over the video, similar to the violent demonstration at the embassy in Cairo. Rice was echoing a set of CIA talking points that have since been made public.

American officials now say there was no protest in Benghazi, only the attack, which began at 9:40 p.m. and continued at a second facility into the next morning.

On Sept. 28, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence issued a statement calling what happened "a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," some with Al Qaeda links or sympathies. The spokesman, Shawn Turner, said the intelligence community first believed the attack "began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo" but that it had revised that initial assessment.

Republicans began portraying the attack as the work of Al Qaeda, and they accused the administration of deliberately seeking to downplay that possibility.

Now, however, said another official with access to the intelligence, "it may turn out that the initial assessment was not that far off."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...b7c_story.html

CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

This isn't completely true though.
1. There weren't demonstrations in Benghazi about the film outside the consulate other than the attack.
2. All the info coming out after the attack made it pretty clear that there was some planning involved in the attack on the safehouse afterwards, if not on the consulate.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/po...ng_with_the_us

Issa’s Benghazi document dump exposes several Libyans working with the U.S.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) compromised the identities of several Libyans working with the U.S. government and placed their lives in danger when he released reams of State Department communications Friday, according to Obama administration officials.

Issa posted 166 pages of sensitive but unclassified State Department communications related to Libya on the committee's website afternoon as part of his effort to investigate security failures and expose contradictions in the administration's statements regarding the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi that resulted in the death of Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

"The American people deserve nothing less than a full explanation from this administration about these events, including why the repeated warnings about a worsening security situation appear to have been ignored by this administration. Americans also deserve a complete explanation about your administration's decision to accelerate a normalized presence in Libya at what now appears to be at the cost of endangering American lives," Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) wrote today in a letter to President Barack Obama.

But Issa didn't bother to retract the names of Libyan civilians and local leaders mentioned in the cables, and just as with the WikiLeaks dump of State Department cables last year, the administration says that Issa has done damage to U.S. efforts to work with those Libyans and exposed them to physical danger from the very groups that had an interest in attacking the U.S. consulate.

[Gibbsisgod2006]

So it looks like two hours after the attack in Benghahzi the White House was aware that the Libyan attacks were results of Islamic extremist according to news outlet

"Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89N02C20121024

[visionary]

Saw that earlier. I'm not sure that really makes a difference one way or the other.

[jpyaks3]

So it looks like two hours after the attack in Benghahzi the White House was aware that the Libyan attacks were results of Islamic extremist according to news outlet

"Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89N02C20121024

They may have been aware that a group was claiming responsibility but plenty of groups take credit for successful attacks in the immediate aftermath whether they had a hand in them or not. You can't really fault the White House for waiting to make sure they had all the facts on the ground before making statements to the public.

[Gibbsisgod2006]

They may have been aware that a group was claiming responsibility but plenty of groups take credit for successful attacks in the immediate aftermath whether they had a hand in them or not. You can't really fault the White House for waiting to make sure they had all the facts on the ground before making statements to the public.

That is true but before you go blaming a mob that supposedly from the result of a dumb movie the President should have not said anything about who was responsible until he had all the information in my opinion.

[jpyaks3]

That is true but before you go blaming a mob that supposedly from the result of a dumb movie the President should have not said anything about who was responsible until he had all the information in my opinion.

I think that a lot of information gets conflated, at the same time there was protests in Egypt and Pakistan that were boiling over as well as the attack in Libya and I think the White Houses response to those three separate events tends to muddle things, it gets even more muddled when Mitt Romney and Republican leadership starts running Obama administration apologizing for American values stuff regarding the message sent out by the Cairo Embassy hours before the protests in Cairo began. Then after the attacks and initial protests more protests exploded across the Muslim world and continued for days so there was a lot of stuff going on at the same time. So I think the best way to describe the whole situation is a cluster**** and I can't really fault the administration for having a sometimes muddled message.