White House: Just Because Ansar Al-Shariah Claimed Responsibility For The Attack, And In Fact Were Later Connected To the Attack, Doesn't Mean You Should Think They Were Connected To The Attack

First, a several-days-old story from the New York Times. The chief suspect -- the "ringleader" -- in the attack is in fact the head of Ansar al-Sharia.

By the way, he's able to sip tea openly at a cafe, without fear. No one's even questioned him about his role in the attack yet.

Witnesses and the authorities have called Ahmed Abu Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission here. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.

...

A few, like the militia group Ansar al-Shariah that is linked to Mr. Abu Khattala and that officials in Washington and Tripoli agree was behind the attack, have embraced an extremist ideology hostile to the West and nursed ambitions to extend it over Libya.

By the way, that article has this guy claiming that the attack was due to a protest -- but his account is plainly dishonest and self-serving. He claims there was a peaceful protest, then US consulate personnel began randomly firing into the crowd, so then of course they got out their pre-sighted mortars and began firing.

They just happened to have a few of those around.

Plus, no one has talked to this guy until a New York Times reporter met him at a cafe. So this isn't the "intelligence" relied upon. This is cooked up after the fact, to make the terrorists sound like the aggrieved party, as usual.

So later evidence does in fact point to Ansar al-Sharia. And so did earlier evidence -- within two hours of the attack, the embassy in Tripoli was reporting that Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack.

And the White House claims: just because Ansar al-Shariah claimed responsibility for the attack, and in fact was responsible for the attack, doesn't make them responsible for the attack.

The White House's position is preposterous. Their early intelligence was correct, and is vindicated by later intelligence. They're claiming, basically, that in the "middle period," right around Susan Rice's press blitz, suddenly they had intelligence casting doubt on the early intel and so, for a couple of weeks, had it wrong, but blamelessly so.

So: The early intel said planned terrorist attack, and the final intel said planned intelligence attack, but somewhere in the middle there they were misled by intelligence that disagreed with the first reports and the later reports.

One problem: We see lots of leaked cables (not leaked by Obama, by the way, but by whistleblowers) demonstrating that intelligence pointed to a planned terrorist attack, and none at all supporting this claim of a "fog of war" where suddenly there was intelligence strongly indicating this was a "sponatenous attack" over a "YouTube video" that got "out of hand."

Where is this intelligence? Because as the actual intelligence stands, there seems to be no "fog of war." There seems instead to be a bright stab of light, constant throughout the entire affair, pointing at one and only one conclusion.

Dedicated 10ther has been pounding this issue and reviewing all of the documents released so far, in a ten part series.

One of his later posts, the ninth, documents an unending list of violent and threatening crimes in Benghazi.

Stevens had been begging for more security for months.

He also notes there that only the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, could sign off on -- waive -- the Department's protocols for security, which were obviously waived here.

posted by Ace at 03:36 PM

| Access Comments