On Sunday, our Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, made the rounds of the NLMSM’s Talk TV shows reciting State’s official understanding of the violent protests and murders around the Middle East, northern Africa, and now spreading to Indonesia.
What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet. It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.
Rice also said that “extremists” arrived with heavy weapons, yet
We don’t see any signs this was a pre-meditated, pre-planned attack.
Hmm….
Meanwhile, CNN has this on “premeditation:”
According to one of the Libyan security guards who was stationed at one of the gates armed with only a radio, the assault began simultaneously from three directions.
Heavy machine guns and rocket -propelled grenades were used, according to the guard. He said masked men threatened to kill him at gunpoint for ‘protecting the infidels. He declined to appear on camera for fear of repercussions.
Yeah, that’s not premeditated.
The Obama administration also has been insisting that it had no specific, actionable intelligence with which to do anything. Never mind a series of attacks and attempted attacks in Libya and Tunisia earlier this summer: an IED thrown at the perimeter of our Benghazi consulate (site of last week’s murders) early June, an RPG attack on the British ambassador’s motorcade in mid-June (injuring two security personnel), an attack the our Tunisian consulate, including burning our flag in late June, and . And on Aug. 5, five weeks before the assault on the U.S. Consulate, and RPG attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Benghazi building in early August. No. No reason to act here. No reason to instruct our embassies and consulates to increase their security. No reason to increase their assets so they could increase their security state.
CNN had this, too, at the above link:
Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.
Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.
He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn’t good for international business.
“The situation is frightening, it scares us,” Mabrouk said they told the US officials.
No actionable intel there. Move along, now.
Then there’s the position of the Libyan government. Also speaking Sunday, Libyan National Congress President Mohammed el-Megarif had this to say:
The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the US Consulate.
He also noted that the attacks were carried out by foreigners and that the attacks had all the indicators of an al-Qaeda attack.
And Senator John McCain (R, AZ), the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, and Congressman Mike Rogers (R, MI), House Intelligence Committee chairman (albeit Evil Republicans), said Sunday the administration’s foreign policy of “disengagement” in the Middle East had created a vacuum which made this type of attack inevitable.
The Middle East believes there is a disengagement policy with the US.
There’s more information here, at Power Line; follow the links.