re: New York Times claims they had a reporter on scene at Benghazi

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I feel a lot better knowing that the good Muslims will take care of their FUMDAMENTALIST ISLAM psychos.

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by doing nothing, it is almost as if they approve of what the terrorist minority wing is doing.

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Where are these "widespread" condemnations?
The muslims who condemned the attack had to remain anonymous so the extremists wouldn't kill them. But they were out there, you'll just have to take Decatur's word for it.

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I don't have the time to verify the accuracy of these quotes, but if true, they make you look dumb.

LINK

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i get this argument, but since this group does an absolutely shitty job at isolating and exiling the extremists, i'm done defending them. if you want the benefit of condemning the violence, do more than just pay lip service

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The Libyan gov has pretty much been in open armed conflict with Ansar al-Sharia for the past few months.

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Benghazi was a spontaneous protest?
Benghazi was a terrorist attack?

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You still haven't answered this question.

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I probably have at least a dozen times over the last year

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“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.”

The CIA document went on: “This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.” This may sound like self-protective boilerplate, but it reflects the analysts’ genuine problem interpreting fragments of intercepted conversation, video surveillance and source reports.

The senior intelligence official said the analysts’ judgment was based in part on monitoring of some of the Benghazi attackers, which showed they had been watching the Cairo protests live on television and talking about them before they assaulted the consulate.

“We believe the timing of the attack was influenced by events in Cairo,” the senior official said, reaffirming the Cairo-Benghazi link. He said that judgment is repeated in a new report prepared this week for the House intelligence committee.

Here’s how the senior official described the jumble of events in Benghazi that day: “The attackers were disorganized; some seemed more interested in looting. Some who claimed to have participated joined the attack as it began or after it was under way. There is no evidence of rehearsals, they never got into the safe room ... never took any hostages, didn’t bring explosives to blow the safe room door, and didn’t use a car bomb to blow the gates.”

The Benghazi flap is the sort of situation that intelligence officers dread: when politicians are demanding hard “yes” or “no” answers but evidence is fragmentary and conflicting. The political debate has focused on whether the attack was spontaneous or planned, but the official said there’s evidence of both, and that different attackers may have had different motives. There’s no dispute, however, that it was “an act of terror,” as Obama described it the next day.

“It was a flash mob with weapons,” is how the senior official described the attackers. The mob included members of the Ansar al-Sharia militia, about four members of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and members of the Egypt-based Muhammad Jamal network, along with other unarmed looters.

The official said the only major change he would make now in the CIA’s Sept. 15 talking points would be to drop the word “spontaneous” and substitute “opportunistic.” He explained that there apparently was “some pre-coordination but minimal planning.”

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LINK

Liars lie.

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“It was a flash mob with weapons,”

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Oxymoron

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drop the word “spontaneous” and substitute “opportunistic.”

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“some pre-coordination but minimal planning.”

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Mincing of words for political purposes.

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A flash mob with mortars and belt fed machine guns that lasted 7 hours

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Are you even familiar with the timeline? Doesn't sound like it.

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There's been ample reporting that the video was a factor, at least for many who were there.

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You consistently ignore the the hard fact that there were two different groups at the diplomatic mission compound that night. The first group attacked the compound, set the fires, engaged the DS agents and a few Libyan guards(and later the CIA security personnel that came over from the Annex) in exchanges of gunfire, and mostly abandoned the compound when the Americans left, either joining those in pursuit over to the Annex, or just melting back into the night.

The second group, the mob that is pictured hanging out at the mission compound throughout the next six hours of darkness, were looters, curiosity seekers, and the occasional "hey, what's this about a video?" groupies that show up at every event of this type. It was this latter group that ran across Stevens body while looting the main villa, and the also members of this "post-attack" group who were interviewed for cameras.

The second group existed ONLY because the first group existed.

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The second group existed ONLY because the first group existed.

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As to the first group:

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The intelligence that helped inform those talking points—and what the U.S. public would ultimately be told—came in part from an intercept of a phone call between one of the alleged attackers and a middle manager from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s north African affiliate, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intercept. In the call, the alleged attacker said the locals went forward with the attack only after watching the riots that same day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

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I think the new Kirkpatrick article references this

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But the Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with Al Qaeda’s international terrorist network. The only intelligence connecting Al Qaeda to the attack was an intercepted phone call that night from a participant in the first wave of the attack to a friend in another African country who had ties to members of Al Qaeda, according to several officials briefed on the call. But when the friend heard the attacker’s boasts, he sounded astonished, the officials said, suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault.

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LINK

I'm not making any of this up. It's what has been reported.