We knew about the attack and did nothing. The attack in Libya was a pre-planned full blown military assault by the Friends of John McCain and the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood / Al-Qeada loving traitors in Washington DC.
From the British Papers, of course, because American ‘Journalism’ is dead:
AND from the Guardian….
Inside the US consulate in Benghazi: material and human damage laid bare
Visit to burned-out consular building reveals extent of attack and gives Libyans a chance to disown mob and offer condolences
Chris Stephen in Benghazi
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 13 September 2012 13.58 EDTBloodstains from a US employee who grabbed a column while being evacuated from Benghazi consulate
A Libyan man explains that the bloodstains are from an American employee who grabbed the column while being evacuated from the consulate in Benghazi. Photograph: Mohammad Hannon/APThe bullet holes, smashed masonry and blood on the walls of the burned-out consulate on the southern outskirts of Benghazi are testament to the gun battle that raged through the building, claiming four lives including that of the US ambassador, Chris Stevens.
As the owners of the damaged building and the accommodation block a mile down the road took the Guardian on a tour of the sites on Thursday, reports that the attack was the work of an isolated group seemed to be at odds with the physical evidence and what their staff had told them.
“Better security would not have stopped this,” said Adel Ibrahim, the owner of the accommodation building where blood is now spattered beneath a hole smashed in a wall by a heavy projectile. “A security unit is fine if you are facing 10 persons, but there were 400 attackers. [The Americans] would have needed an army to stop them.”
It is clear the US staff and their Libyan guards were subjected to a terrifying, night-long ordeal, which began with protests outside the consulate in the al-Fawahat residential district. Demonstrators gathered in the narrow Venice Street outside the main gated entrance, voicing protests against the reported release in the US of a film that ridiculed Islam.
The protest quickly turned violent, the landlords said. Who fired first is a matter of dispute, with some claiming the Libyan security guards hired by the Americans shot in the air, panicking the crowd.
There is no doubt about what happened next. The compound is bound by a breeze-block wall topped by barbed wire, but it was not enough to stop the attackers. “They jumped in from everywhere,” said Ahmed Busheri, owner of the consulate.
In the melee, a single rocket-propelled grenade appears to have been fired from within the compound, detonating on one of the heavy concrete barriers set up outside to deter car bombs.
Several of the consulate’s Libyan guards were injured during the fighting and others melted away, the landlords said, leaving the diplomats to fend for themselves.
Embassy staff had prepared for such an eventuality, having built themselves two positions with sandbags on either side of a villa to the left of the main gate. Three of the Americans – including Stevens – were forced to retreat from these positions towards the small terrace in the centre of the villa. This, according to Busheri, is where two of Stevens’ security guards died. Stevens himself ran inside the villa, the landlords said, where he suffocated in the smoke from the blaze that has left the interior of guest rooms and a kitchen charred, blackened and heavy with the stench of putrefying food.
Once the mob had seized the compound they looted it. The surrounding lawns are covered in stray US army ready meals, broken furniture and, incongruously, the dustjacket of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book on the history of Jerusalem.
US Libya consulate damage Damage inside the burnt consulate building in Benghazi. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty ImagesThere is evidence that at least some of the demonstrators were horrified by what they saw: a group of civilians found the ambassador, smoke-blackened and bleeding from a cut in his head, and rushed him to the city’s main hospital, Benghazi Medical Centre.
Staff there had been expecting the ambassador at 11am on Wednesday as he had come to Benghazi to inaugurate a landmark medical exchange project between the centre and Harvard Medical School, the centre’s director, Dr Fathi al-Jehani, said. Instead, Stevens’ body arrived at the emergency ramp at 2am, together with a Libyan embassy translator who had been shot in the leg.
There was confusion as the civilians unloaded them from two private cars which had come tearing into the hospital grounds. “He had no form of identification on him,” Jehani said. “One of the people with him said: ‘This is the ambassador. The ambassador is suffocating from the smoke.’” Emergency staff had heard the sound of fighting hours before and sent an ambulance, but it became lost in the confusion. “We tried to revive him,” Jehani said. He did not finish the sentence.
The night’s fighting had not finished. A mile south of the consulate is a smaller walled compound used as accommodation for most of the dozen US staff posted to Benghazi. As the crowd surged into the consulate, one group of diplomats managed to bundle themselves into a white armoured jeep, forcing it out through the main gates, the landlords said. It tore down the highway towards the accommodation block, surviving an attack as it drove through the armed mob.
Busheri said the jeep arrived at the accommodation compound gates at 4am and, an hour later, the protesters that had torched the consulate arrived outside. They “came here to try and ambush, there was an exchange of fire,” Busheri said.
Inside, he showed the result of the fighting. A projectile, possibly a rocket-propelled grenade, had clipped the outside wall and smashed into the main building, blowing out a chunk of masonry. Below it, flecks of brownish blood were spattered on the garden wall, where the fourth American was killed. Staff held off the mob for an hour until government security forces arrived on the scene as dawn broke.
Both compounds now lie empty. The consulate’s buildings have been torched and three embassy cars are blackened wrecks. US officials arrived at the accommodation block on Wednesday to remove the belongings of the staff living there.
US consulate, Benghazi US consulate, Benghazi. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty ImagesSigns of the diplomats remain. The grey dumb-bells of a makeshift gym remain outside the main gate. Nearby, a whiteboard pinned to the wall has the instruction: “pick up your trash before leaving”.
“If I could talk to the families of those who died I would say we are sad because, you know, the ambassador has been good for all Libyans,” said Kolan Garmud, who co-owns the accommodation building with Ibrahim. “We will not forget how he helped us in the revolution.”
It is a refrain heard across this shocked city. Stevens was one of the first US diplomats to arrive in Benghazi at the beginning of last year’s revolution. He had a reputation here and in the capital, Tripoli, for his enthusiastic backing of medical and social initiatives, and for his informal style.
“He had good relations with my colleagues,” said Jehani.
“So he was loved?” a journalist asked.
“He is loved,” said Jehani, emphasising the word “is”.
Almost overcome with emotion, he said two Boston doctors who had arrived for the inauguration this week had flown home. “The people who did this, they are a very small minority,” Jehani said. “We did not get out of the [Muammar Gaddafi] dictatorship to be under somebody who is driven by hate.”
Benghazi has suffered from activities blamed on jihadists for several months, and anger is directed equally at the protagonists and at a government seen as unwilling to stand up to them.
Last April, a UN convoy carrying the envoy Ian Martin was bombed in the city, followed by attacks on the Tunisian consulate and the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Jihadists also wrecked a Commonwealth war graves cemetery in the city, and, though it has been repaired, the vandalised stone cross that formed the cenotaph has not been replaced. In June, the British ambassador, Dominic Asquith, narrowly survived when a rocket missed him and hit the armoured car carrying his security detail, two of whom were wounded.
The Islamist Ansar al-Sharia brigade is blamed by many here for the violence, particularly with the appearance of a video that appears to show two US embassy vehicles plundered from the burning compound being driven into the brigade’s Benghazi barracks. Brigade leaders have issued a denial of responsibility but were unwilling to talk to journalists on Thursday.
“They [Sharia] have pros and cons,” said Saleh el-Fellah, who works in Benghazi’s Friendship Cafe. “They were the ones who provided security [in the revolution]. The cons are all the bad things they have been doing. They take everything to extremes, they are ruining the reputation of Islam.”
Sadness is everywhere in the city whose proud boast is that it was the cradle of last year’s revolution. A Libyan photographer inside the ruined compound came over to offer an unsolicited apology. “We are not all like this,” he insisted. “Libyans do not approve of this.”
There is also unease about how America will react. It has not had an ambassador killed since 1979, and President Barack Obama’s vow that “justice will be served” has fuelled rumours that US marines now deployed in Tripoli will head to Benghazi and take action.
But many also hope the government will move against the protagonists. “They have to show a fist of steel,” said Mohammed el-Kish, a former press officer with the National Transitional Council which handed over power last month to Libya’s newly elected congress.
“They have got to rid us of these people.”
From my old stomping grounds:
US: Warships move toward Libya, consulate in Berlin evacuated
The U.S. Embassy says its consulate in Berlin has been evacuated as a precaution after an employee reported a strange smell from an envelope.
Spokeswoman Ruth Bennett said the smell came from an envelope containing supporting materials for a visa application given to consular employees by the applicant in person Thursday morning.
There were no reports of injuries and American and German authorities are now examining the contents of the applicant.
Bennett says she has no immediate information on the status of the person who brought the envelope in.
The U.S. Embassy is located in downtown but the consulate is in the southern Zehlendorf area.
I worked in embassy / ambassador security for 4 years in West Berlin so this attack really hits home for me. I can only imagine what was going through the security detail’s mind when this went down. So, we will see what kind of spine the GOP has now. This is a serious breach in security. Heads should roll starting with Hillary and the President and ending with that traitor John McCain. The administration had 48 hours to act to protect the staff and did nothing. This goes beyond incompetence into something far far worse.
UPDATE, from our own Aussie Infidel:
Libya and the al Qaeda hit
The Chronology:-
It would appear that the Libyan anti-American attack is substantially different from the current spate of anti-American riots across the Middle East. The fact that these disturbances happened when they did is no coincidence. The anniversary of 9-11 was just too significant a date to allow to pass without some blowback after the recent successes in the US ‘drone war’ against al Qaeda.
The CIA personnel on the ground in Libya and in Benghazi in particular were told specifically by the Clinton State Department to maintain a very quiescent profile and not actively collect intelligence, lest it upset the local Jihadists. Likewise the US State Department insisted that US Marine Corps personnel carry unloaded weapons only and to keep their magazines in their carry vests until ordered to load by non military embassy personnel. This OPSEC information was well known by the local Jihadists, Salifists and al Qaeda operatives.
The State Department also refused advice from the Marine Corps detachment to beef up security at all diplomatic locations in Libya, as the 9-11 anniversary approached. The orders were reported as coming from the ‘highest levels in Washington’. Whether that meant Obama or from Hillary Clinton is unclear. The Benghazi US Consulate site was not well protected and had only recently been used as a Consulate, so there was virtually no real protection or stand off capability to repel or slow an attack. Again the State Department was very tardy in upgrading the building because of funding constrictions within the State Department.
On the 9th. and 10th. of September the Libyan government, warned the Benghazi US Consulate as well as the US Embassy in Tripoli that trouble was on the way on 9-11. This information was specifically ignored by senior staff at the US State Department, reporting directly to Clinton. On the morning of 11th September, a few hours before the attack, Zawahri called for revenge on the US for killing of al Qaeda #2 Abu Yahya al-Libi. This was the signal for the Salifists to provide ‘noise’ to mask the covert approach of the al Qaeda ‘hit team’ . Still the US State Department staff on the ground in Libya failed to actively protect themselves for fear of alienating Muslims in Libya on a sensitive date like 9-11. Now that ‘two of their own’ (Stevens & Smith) have been assassinated, other State Department employees are leaking information to anyone who will listen regarding the run up to this attack, to deflect criticism from themselves.
The Benghazi attack was a carefully planned al Qaeda attack by a team of 20 professional terrorists, whereas most riots elsewhere were orchestrated attacks to provide the background ‘noise’ to initially mask the Libyan professional hit. This professional hit was in response to the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi in June by a US drone in north western Pakistan. Libya was specifically chosen because Abu Yahya al-Libi was Libyan and Benghazi was awash with Salifists (background noise) and al Qaeda operatives (the hit team) who were involved in the rebel forces that US White House sponsored in the bid to oust Gaddafi. President Obama was specifically warned about involving himself and the US in the Libyan war on Qaddafi. He chose to ignore that advice.
It would appear that the ‘hit team’, led by Ayman al Zawahri, broke into two sections of 10 each. The first section used 60mm light mortars, RPG7s and machine guns to lay siege to the Benghazi US Consulate villa, and started a fire in the building. US Ambassador Stevens and Information director Smith plus two US Marine Corps close protection personnel attempted to flee the siege after many hours and fell foul to a carefully sited ambush by the second al Qaeda team. The vehicle was stopped by RPG7 fire and the wounded occupants were executed on the ground beside the vehicle. The US victims of the ambush then lay for a further 8 hours whilst the CIA operatives in Libya were restrained by orders from the State Department and White House not to actively seek intelligence and find the missing Ambassador. Obama went to bed and nothing further was done until 8 hours later when Stevens and his group were still missing. Under US Marine Corps detachment prodding and State Department personnel forebodings, a search was then mounted for the Ambassador and his party and the burned out car and bodies were found.
Two destroyers were dispatched on station off Libya, to act as receiving platforms in case an evacuation of all US staff in Libya is necessary. A detachment of 50 US Marine Corps personnel were flown in with a small FBI forensic and investigative team. Even now after these assassinations and a direct attack on US territory in the Consulate, in fear of upsetting local Muslims, the ‘Rules of Engagement’ (issued by the Obama White House) for the Marines is so nebulous and restrictive that they are effectively walking targets. This tragedy is a direct result of actions not taken by the US Department of State and the Obama Administration. We have yet to see the end of this as a second offensive across the Middle East is coming in a few hours as ‘Friday Prayers’ spill their agitated congregations onto the streets across the Middle East.
If there’s proof that the O Administration ignored intel, it’d be huge. The tragic murders of American citizens, on sovereign American soil, can’t be excused. And we can find proof that Marines were ordered to keep their weapons unloaded, with ‘non military’ personnel the only ones who could give the order to load… Dang.
this attack was planned from the inside.
al-q knew the ambassador was going to be there and then the full scale pre-planned military assault was on
There you go mate:-
Libya and the al Qaeda hit The Chronology:-
It would appear that the Libyan anti-American attack is substantially different from the current spate of anti-American riots across the Middle East. The fact that these disturbances happened when they did is no coincidence. The anniversary of 9-11 was just too significant a date to allow to pass without some blowback after the recent successes in the US ‘drone war’ against al Qaeda.
The CIA personnel on the ground in Libya and in Benghazi in particular were told specifically by the Clinton State Department to maintain a very quiescent profile and not actively collect intelligence, lest it upset the local Jihadists. Likewise the US State Department insisted that US Marine Corps personnel carry unloaded weapons only and to keep their magazines in their carry vests until ordered to load by non military embassy personnel. This OPSEC information was well known by the local Jihadists, Salifists and al Qaeda operatives.
The State Department also refused advice from the Marine Corps detachment to beef up security at all diplomatic locations in Libya, as the 9-11 anniversary approached. The orders were reported as coming from the ‘highest levels in Washington’. Whether that meant Obama or from Hillary Clinton is unclear. The Benghazi US Consulate site was not well protected and had only recently been used as a Consulate, so there was virtually no real protection or stand off capability to repel or slow an attack. Again the State Department was very tardy in upgrading the building because of funding constrictions within the State Department.
On the 9th. and 10th. of September the Libyan government, warned the Benghazi US Consulate as well as the US Embassy in Tripoli that trouble was on the way on 9-11. This information was specifically ignored by senior staff at the US State Department, reporting directly to Clinton. On the morning of 11th September, a few hours before the attack, Zawahri called for revenge on the US for killing of al Qaeda #2 Abu Yahya al-Libi. This was the signal for the Salifists to provide ‘noise’ to mask the covert approach of the al Qaeda ‘hit team’ . Still the US State Department staff on the ground in Libya failed to actively protect themselves for fear of alienating Muslims in Libya on a sensitive date like 9-11. Now that ‘two of their own’ (Stevens & Smith) have been assassinated, other State Department employees are leaking information to anyone who will listen regarding the run up to this attack, to deflect criticism from themselves.
The Benghazi attack was a carefully planned al Qaeda attack by a team of 20 professional terrorists, whereas most riots elsewhere were orchestrated attacks to provide the background ‘noise’ to initially mask the Libyan professional hit. This professional hit was in response to the killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi in June by a US drone in north western Pakistan. Libya was specifically chosen because Abu Yahya al-Libi was Libyan and Benghazi was awash with Salifists (background noise) and al Qaeda operatives (the hit team) who were involved in the rebel forces that US White House sponsored in the bid to oust Gaddafi. President Obama was specifically warned about involving himself and the US in the Libyan war on Qaddafi. He chose to ignore that advice.
It would appear that the ‘hit team’, led by Ayman al Zawahri, broke into two sections of 10 each. The first section used 60mm light mortars, RPG7s and machine guns to lay siege to the Benghazi US Consulate villa, and started a fire in the building. US Ambassador Stevens and Information director Smith plus two US Marine Corps close protection personnel attempted to flee the siege after many hours and fell foul to a carefully sited ambush by the second al Qaeda team. The vehicle was stopped by RPG7 fire and the wounded occupants were executed on the ground beside the vehicle. The US victims of the ambush then lay for a further 8 hours whilst the CIA operatives in Libya were restrained by orders from the State Department and White House not to actively seek intelligence and find the missing Ambassador. Obama went to bed and nothing further was done until 8 hours later when Stevens and his group were still missing. Under US Marine Corps detachment prodding and State Department personnel forebodings, a search was then mounted for the Ambassador and his party and the burned out car and bodies were found.
Two destroyers were dispatched on station off Libya, to act as receiving platforms in case an evacuation of all US staff in Libya is necessary. A detachment of 50 US Marine Corps personnel were flown in with a small FBI forensic and investigative team. Even now after these assassinations and a direct attack on US territory in the Consulate, in fear of upsetting local Muslims, the ‘Rules of Engagement’ (issued by the Obama White House) for the Marines is so nebulous and restrictive that they are effectively walking targets. This tragedy is a direct result of actions not taken by the US Department of State and the Obama Administration. We have yet to see the end of this as a second offensive across the Middle East is coming in a few hours as ‘Friday Prayers’ spill their agitated congregations onto the streets across the Middle East.
END
Regarding the lack of security at the Benghazi Consulate villa STRATFOR has also put their oar in with this:-
STRATFOR: The makeshift consulate in Benghazi housed very few U.S. employees and very little classified information, so there was less of an evident need for a detachment of U.S. Marine Security Guards than, for example, at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo (there is not even a MSG detachment at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli due to host country sentiments). MSGs at an embassy or a consulate are charged with protecting the interior of the facility, including U.S. personnel and classified material. Working under the direction of the Regional Security Officer, a special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service, the MSGs will normally begin their defense at the interior “hardline,” an interior layer of robust physical security measures, though at times they will take to an embassy roof to fire teargas or to help defend the facility. The ambassador’s presence at the consulate in Benghazi was an anomaly. He would normally work from his office in the embassy in Tripoli — a facility built to U.S. State Department security standards that opened in 2009.
The U.S. government accountability review board that will be established to investigate the Benghazi attack will undoubtedly examine the decision to take Stevens into a city with a demonstrable jihadist threat on the anniversary of 9/11. The ambassador did have a protective security detail consisting of Diplomatic Security Service agents and local security officers with him at the time of the attack, but the assailants were armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The detail quickly became outgunned and trapped in a facility with poor physical security.
END
Even though Libya is a SNAFU it is not really the key to this exploding security situation. The crux of the problem is:-
EGYPT
Every other tin pot regime in the ME that is currently rioting and burning US assets is just a side show.
Egypt is where the really serious stuff is going down today.
There is currently under way a major strategic shift in ME politics and the certitudes of the past 30 years or more going right back to the Oslo Accords. Before the Islamist regime, now elected into Egypt is ready, events are driving them to alter the ground that has seen Egypt as the linchpin to both US and Israeli security for decades. The pressure is from the Salifists and Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt is transitioning as we speak from a strategic partner in maintaining the foundation stone security to Israel’s south to a new entity with different drivers and different objectives. The Egyptian armed forces leadership have been sidelined and nobody stands in the way of radical factions within the Muslim Brotherhood of moving Egypt to a new paradigm. A radical Islamist paradigm.
Egypt is where the serious action is developing. Look for some form of accommodation between Iran and Egypt. Yes Sunni and Shi’a will co-operate when it suits them for the moment. Egypt is moving strategically just when the US is deep in election mode and the US Commander in Chief if even more distracted and hesitant than he normally is. These are serious times for the US foreign policy and grave times for the State of Israel.
Watch this space
END
I posted the three pieces under the Special Reports Comments for you.
Cheers,
Aussie Infidel
@ Aussie Infidel:
thanks!
My mate at State just about had a heart attack when he read this blog. I will send him a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and maybe he’ll forgive me but someone had to say it in the open.
Talk tomorrow mate. Late here.
This lack of concern by this administration for military and embassy staff overseas is absolutely disgusting and treasonous.
I said to my husband last night, “I can’t believe I’m complimenting Carter but at least when the raid to rescue the Iranian hostages turned into a tragic disaster, you could tell he was upset about it and he took responsibility for it.”
I have a new plan-let’s protect American citizens, even if it antagonizes the f*(%ing jihadists.
The fiascoes in Egypt and Libya are nothing short of epic dereliction of duty at the very highest levels of the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department. The Obama regime is totally asleep at the switch and our enemies know it. What other vulnerabilities are out there that are known to our enemies but not yet exploited?
Are we financially better off than we were 4 years ago?
Are we safer than we were 4 years ago?
The answer to both is unequivocally HELL NO!!!
While I want to wait until the facts are in before passing final judgment in my mind, I fully expect these incidents to be swept under the rug by our government and their co-conspirators the MFM, as was the case with Fast and Furious.
Obama and Clinton are going to Andrews to meet the plane carrying the bodies of our people.
I’m sure their families will be thrilled.
//
@ Aussie Infidel:
@ Aussie Infidel:
thanks for the info!
Hillary and her staff have shown her disdain for our military from day one. Remember when she was in the WH. She had open disdain for the Military. She treated the military staff as servants?
@ Aussie Infidel:
I ‘d say Obama was out smarted and it wasn’t that hard to do.