Benghazi thread..[up-to-date-info here]

[apples]

CIA saw possible terror ties day after Libya hit: AP

WASHINGTON The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press.

It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went.

The Obama administration maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was a result of the mobs that staged less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

Those statements have become highly charged political fodder as the presidential election approaches. A Republican-led House committee questioned State Department officials for hours about what GOP lawmakers said was lax security at the consulate, given the growth of extremist Islamic militants in North Africa.

And in their debate on Tuesday, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney argued over when Obama first said it was a terror attack. In his Rose

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57535773/cia-saw-possible-terror-ties-day-after-libya-hit-ap/

[apples]

Documents show Stevens worried about Libya security threats, Al Qaeda before consulate attack

Across 166 pages of internal State Department documents -- released Friday by a pair of Republican congressmen pressing the Obama administration for more answers on the Benghazi terrorist attack -- slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and the security officers assigned to protect him repeatedly sounded alarms to their superiors in Washington about the intensifying lawlessness and violence in Eastern Libya, where Stevens ultimately died.

On Sept. 11 -- the day Stevens and three other Americans were killed -- the ambassador signed a three-page cable, labeled "sensitive," in which he noted "growing problems with security" in Benghazi and "growing frustration" on the part of local residents with Libyan police and security forces.  These forces the ambassador characterized as "too weak to keep the country secure." 

In the document, Stevens also cited a meeting he had held two days earlier with local militia commanders.  These men boasted to Stevens of exercising "control" over the Libyan Armed Forces, and threatened that if the U.S.-backed candidate for prime minister were to prevail in Libya's internal political jockeying, "they would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi." 

Roughly a month earlier, Stevens had signed a two-page cable, also labeled "sensitive," that he entitled "The Guns of August: Security in Eastern Libya." Writing on Aug. 8, the ambassador noted that in just a few months' time, "Benghazi has moved from trepidation to euphoria and back as a series of violent incidents has dominated the political landscape." He added, "The individual incidents have been organized," a function of "the security vacuum that a diverse group of independent actors are exploiting

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/19/documents-show-stevens-worried-about-libya-security-threats-al-qaeda-before/#ixzz29lyLHnA9

[apples]

U.S. description of Benghazi attacks, at first cautious, changed after 3 days

On the day after the attack, transcripts show, senior administration officials, briefing reporters, declined in response to three direct questions to link the Benghazi assaults to protests over the video. One senior official told reporters during the briefing that “unidentified Libyan extremists” launched what was “clearly a complex attack.” The official isn’t named because such briefings typically come on the condition of anonymity.

At campaign stops in Colorado and Nevada the next day, Sept. 13, Obama referred to the Benghazi assault as “an act of terror.” At the State Department press briefing that day, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was asked directly and repeatedly whether there was a link between the video protests and the attack on the U.S. consulate.

While she mentioned that commentary on social media was making the link “to this reprehensible video,” Nuland emphasized several times that there wasn’t enough information for officials to make that leap, even though some news reports, including those of The New York Times and Agence France Presse, were citing unnamed witnesses in Libya who said that anger over the video was the reason the consulate was targeted.

“We are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, whether it was premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, whether there was any link, until we have a chance to investigate along with the Libyans,” Nuland said.

That evening, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over a State Department reception marking an Islamic holiday; her remarks made no mention of a protest and made only passing reference to reports that listed “inflammatory material posted on the Internet” as a possible motive.

One of the speakers, Ali Suleiman Aujali, the Libyan ambassador to the United States, told Clinton and the other attendees in no uncertain terms that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.

“I hope that this sad incident which happened, this terrorist attack which took place against the American consulate in Libya, it will tell us how much we have to work closely,” Aujali said, according to the official transcript.

The story, however, began to change the next day, Sept. 14.

With images of besieged U.S. missions in the Middle East still leading the evening news, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney became the first official to back away from the earlier declaration that the Benghazi assault was a “complex attack” by extremists. Instead, Carney told reporters, authorities “have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” He added that there was no reason to think that the Benghazi attack wasn’t related to the video, given that the clip had sparked protests in many Muslim cities.

“The unrest that we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive,” Carney said.

When pressed by reporters who pointed out evidence that the violence in Benghazi was preplanned, Carney said that “news reports” had speculated about the motive. He noted again that “the unrest around the region has been in response to this video.”

Carney then launched into remarks that read like talking points in defense of the U.S. decision to intervene in last year’s uprising against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi: that post-Gadhafi Libya, he said, is “one of the more pro-American countries in the region,” that it’s led by a new government “that has just come out of a revolution,” and that the lack of security capabilities there “is not necessarily reflective of anything except for the remarkable transformation that’s been going on in the region.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/18/171933/obama-administration-officials.html#storylink=cpy

[apples]

Libya rescue squad ran into fierce, accurate ambush article date sept 13 2012

Thu Sep 13, 2012 2:41am IST

* U.S. rescue mission to Benghazi hit by 'professional' ambush

* Two diplomats killed at consulate, two at 'safe' house fight

* Rescue raid for diplomats dogged by miscommunication

By Hadeel Al Shalchi

BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept 12 (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops despatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.

Accounts of the mayhem at the U.S. consulate, where the ambassador and a fourth American died after a chaotic protest over a film insulting to Islam, remain patchy. But two Libyan officials, including the commander of a security force which escorted the U.S. rescuers, said a later assault on a supposedly safe refuge for the diplomats appeared professionally executed.

Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue - there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected - also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.

Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.

"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."

Obeidi's Libya's Shield Brigade was formed by civilians during last year's U.S.-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi and is now part of the ad hoc government militia forces which the fledgling democratic administration uses to keep order.

Other Libyan officials cited the possible involvement of former soldiers still loyal to Gaddafi's family or Islamist fighters, some of whom have trained and fought in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have noted it was "complex attack". Several Libyan officials and witnesses said an initial demonstration at the consulate appeared to be largely unarmed, though some elements of an Islamist militia were spotted.

At some point, the crowd became incensed, believing they were under attack from within the consulate, many fetched weapons and the consular villa ended up in flames, with most of the Americans fleeing to the safe house after two, including ambassador Christopher Stevens, had been fatally injured.

"RAINING DOWN FIRE"

Of the eight American troops who had come from Tripoli, one was killed and two were wounded, Obeidi said. A Libyan deputy interior minister said a second American was also killed in the attack

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/12/libya-ambassador-battle-idINL5E8KCMYB20120912

[apples]

Suspect in Libya Attack, in Plain Sight, Scoffs at U.S.

Libya’s fledgling national army is a “national chicken,” Mr. Abu Khattala said, using an Arabic rhyme. Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission’s attackers, he smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government could possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”

Mr. Abu Khattala’s defiance — no authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding — offered insight into the shadowy landscape of the self-formed militias that have come to constitute the only source of social order in Libya since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

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. But also troubling to the United States is the evident tolerance shown by other militias allied with the government, which have so far declined to take any action against suspects in the Benghazi attack.

Although Mr. Abu Khattala said he was not a member of Al Qaeda, he declared he would be proud to be associated with Al Qaeda’s puritanical zeal for Islamic law. And he said that the United States had its own foreign policy to blame for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Why is the United States always trying to impose its ideology on everyone else?” he asked. “Why is it always trying to use force to implement its agendas?”

Owing in part to the inability of either the Libyans or the Americans to mount a serious investigation, American dissections of the assault on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi have become muddled in a political debate over the identities and motivations of the attackers. Some Republicans have charged that the Obama administration initially sought to obscure a possible connection to Al Qaeda in order to protect its claim to have brought the group to its knees.

Mr. Abu Khattala, 41, wearing a red fez and sandals, added his own spin. Contradicting the accounts of many witnesses and the most recent account of the Obama administration, he contended that the attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/world/africa/suspect-in-benghazi-attack-scoffs-at-us.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

[apples]

The Libya Lie

Almost everything we have been told about Libya over the last two years is untrue.

A free Libya was supposed to be proof of President Obama?s enlightened ?reset? Middle East policy. When insurgency broke out there, the United States joined France and Great Britain in bombing Moammar Qaddafi out of power ? and supposedly empowering a democratic Arab Spring regime. Not a single American life was lost.

Libyans, like most in the Arab world, were supposed to appreciate the new, enlightened American foreign policy. Obama?s June 2009 Cairo speech had praised Islam and apologized for the West. A new ?lead from behind? multilateralism was said to have superseded George W. Bush?s neo-imperialist interventions of the past.

Obama?s mixed racial identity and his father?s Muslim heritage would also win over the hearts and minds of Libyans after the Qaddafi nightmare. During this summer?s Democratic convention, Obama supporters trumpeted the successes of his Middle East policy: Osama bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda defanged, and Arab Spring reformers in place of dictators.

To keep that shining message viable until the November election, the Obama administration and the media had been willing to overlook or mischaracterize all sorts of disturbing events. We had asked for a United Nations resolution for humanitarian aid and a no-fly zone to intervene in Libya, but then deliberately exceeded it by bombing Qaddafi?s forces ? after bypassing the U.S. Congress in favor of a go-ahead from the Arab League.

Libya was not so much liberated as descending into the chaos of tribal payback. Former Qaddafi supporters and African mercenaries were executed by those we helped. Islamists began consolidating power, desecrating a British military cemetery and driving out Westerners.

On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, a radical Islamist hit team with heavy weapons stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In response, White House press secretary Jay Carney, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice desperately insisted that the murders were a one-time, ad hoc demonstration gone awry, without much larger significance. Supposedly, a few Muslim outliers ? inflamed over one American?s anti-Islamic Internet video ? had overreacted and stormed the consulate. Such anger was ?natural,? assured the president.

But why would furor over an obscure, months-old Internet video just happen to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary attack? Do demonstrators customarily bring along rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and heavy machine guns? Why did the Libyan government attribute the killings to an al-Qaeda affiliate when the Obama administration would not?

Forget those questions: For most of September, desperate administration officials still clung to the myth that the Libyan catastrophe was a result of a single obnoxious video. At the United Nations, the president castigated the uncouth film. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented the senseless spontaneous violence that grew out of one American?s excesses, as she spoke beside the returning coffins of the slain Americans.

Nonetheless, more disturbing facts kept emerging: Ambassador Stevens repeatedly had warned his State Department superiors in vain of impending Islamist violence. Security personnel ? to no avail ? had also urged beefing up the protection of the consulate, prompting former regional security officer Eric Nordstrom to say in exasperation that ?the Taliban is on the inside of the building.? Video of the attack revealed that there had been no demonstration at all, but rather a

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/330778

[apples]

NBC’s David Gregory Calls Obama Admin’s Libya Response ‘Sluggish, Sloppy, And Incoherent’

During an appearance on NBC’s Today Show Friday morning, Meet the Press host David Gregory called the Obama administration’s response to the September 11th violent attacks in Benghazi, Libya, “sluggish, sloppy, and incoherent at some times.”

Host Savannah Guthrie had asked Gregory to assess each candidate’s chances in next Monday’s foreign policy-focused president debate. Gregory mentioned that Romney had several “missteps” in the previous debate regarding the Libya question, but also noted that Obama is facing criticism for “his talking points on this, on Jon Stewart saying when four Americans are killed it’s ‘not optimal.’”

“There’s still some confusion,” he noted, “about how the administration response on this was both sluggish, sloppy, and incoherent at some times.”

Watch below, via NBC:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/nbcs-david-gregory-calls-obama-admins-libya-response-sluggish-sloppy-and-incoherent/

[apples]

Incommunicado

House Armed Services chairman blocked from getting answers from senior military about threat warnings prior to Benghazi consulate attack

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is demanding answers from four senior United States military officers about whether there was advance warning of terrorist threats and the need for greater security prior to last month’s terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

However, an aide to the chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R., Calif.), said the office of secretary of defense Leon Panetta blocked the senior officers from providing the answers last night.

“The chairman is disappointed that the administration won’t respond to this basic request for information,” the aide said.

“It is nearly unprecedented that the office of the secretary of defense would prohibit a member of the uniformed military from answering direct questions posed by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.”

Pentagon spokesman George Little told the Free Beacon: “We received the letters last night and are working expeditiously to provide a response.”

The chairman’s letters are dated Thursday. They were sent to Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, which is responsible for military activities in Africa; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command; Vice Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, director for operations at the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; and Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn,

http://freebeacon.com/incommunicado/

[Stan In FL]

the word is "incompetent".  but someone is going to have to convince me that it isn't criminal.

NBC’s David Gregory Calls Obama Admin’s Libya Response ‘Sluggish, Sloppy, And Incoherent’

[apples]

US aircraft were near Benghazi during Libya attack but unable to prevent deaths: report

US drones were in the skies over Benghazi during last month’s fatal attack on US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, a new report claims.

Defense Department officials weighed sending troops to rescue Stevens and more than 30 other Americans whose compound was surrounded by an angry mob on Sept. 11, says the report by CBS News.

But no US counterattack or rescue effort was carried out.



The drone and other reconnaissance aircraft observed the final hours of the protracted, seven-hour battle at the US Consulate.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/prevent_aircrafts_fatalities_unable_gkgtu0Xh5FU0qwhyQZzJOK

[apples]

W.H. Tries to Write Al Qaeda Out of Libya Story

The Obama administration appears to be mounting yet another version of its campaign to push back on claims that it misled on the intelligence related to the attacks in Benghazi on 9/11/12. But the new offensive by the administration, which contradicts many of its earlier claims and simply disregards intelligence that complicates its case, is raising fresh questions in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill about the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.
obamaheaddown

The administration's new line takes shape in two articles out Saturday, one in the Los Angeles Times and the other by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. The Times piece reports that there is no evidence of an al Qaeda role in the attack. The Ignatius column makes a directly political argument, claiming that "the Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attacks weren't supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior intelligence official."

If this is the best the Obama administration can offer in its defense, they're in trouble. The Times story is almost certainly wrong and the central part of the Ignatius "scoop" isn't a scoop at all. We'll start there.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh-tries-write-al-qaeda-out-libya-story_655130.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[apples]

Glenn was right, Libya edition: stunning new report

    and the U.S. surely knew about it.

    Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died.”

    And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out heavy weapons from Libya.

    In any case, the connection between Benghazi and the rise of jihadists in Syria is stronger than has been officially acknowledged.

“You follow this? The guy we worked with is the guy doing these deals. Our ally Turkey is ‑‑ knows all about it. Our ally, the prime minister, who’s the best friend of Barack Obama? Who’s the one he was the first one to call? He didn’t call, not Tony Blair, he didn’t call Gordan Brown. He didn’t call anybody. The first guy he called was Turkey’s leader. He’s the closest to Turkey’s leader,” Glenn said.

“Turkey is taking the arms from Libya and shipping them into Syria. Reuters also reports that satellite photos exposed a CIA post in Benghazi located 1.2 miles from the consulate. It was used as a base, among other things, for collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from the Libyan government, including surface‑to‑air missiles. And that its security features were more advanced than those at the rented villa where Stevens died. We also know that a dozen CIA operatives and contractors left the Benghazi base after it was exposed. Could the two CIA groups be connected as a start‑and‑end points to help funnel heavy weapons to the Syrian opposition. The answer is yes. We know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. CNN reports that FSA members are cutting their own deals to get weapons from well‑armed extremists.”

“So it raises questions on who the CIA is arming. We also know that U.S. weapons are now ending up in the hands of hardline Islamists in Syria. It turns out that many of the jihadists are the same ones, the same people that Stevens helped arm to topple Muammar Gaddafi.”

“Now here we go. Who was he having dinner with? On September 11th. September 11th he was having a meeting with the Turkish ambassador, the guy who’s involved in the gun‑runnings.  He’s having d

links and way more info here

[apples]

'Annex' hit in Libya terror attack was CIA post, officials say

The Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi targeted more than just a State Department consulate. One of the buildings hit was a covert CIA installation, U.S. officials told Fox News.

The now-abandoned American consulate in Benghazi was set a little more than a mile away from the CIA base. Up to this point, that separate base was described by administration officials only as a "safe house" or "annex" to the nearby consulate. In reality, CIA agents and other intelligence officials were operating out of Benghazi conducting delicate missions, including the search for over 20,000 deadly shoulder-fired missiles previously owned by Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan forces.

The work they conducted to seize those deadly weapons, known as MANPADS, was part of a broader and public effort by the State Department to secure them. The major concern is those weapons could be used to bring down a commercial jet.

These officials added that the number of CIA operatives in Benghazi clearly outnumbered that of the diplomatic staff.  It took two military cargo aircraft to lift everyone out of Benghazi when the fighting was over.

Both the CIA outpost and the consulate were attacked on Sept. 11.  Two of the men killed, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were hit by indirect fire while defending the intelligence post, not the consulate.

One witness told Fox News that Doherty and Woods were found on the roof of the intelligence base manning a single machine gun that was caked in blood, suggesting they continued firing after they were hit by a mortar round approximately seven hours after the attack began.

U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and information analyst Sean Smith were also killed in the attack hours earlier at the consulate.

In general, U.S. officials also say the consulate is better described as a diplomatic mission. It didn't carry out all the traditional roles of a consulate, such as issuing visas.

Revelations concerning just how sensitive operations were in Benghazi began to trickle out during the House oversight committee hearing two weeks ago with witnesses Charlene Lamb, a State Department official who heads diplomatic security, and Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary for management at State. As part of their testimony, the two presented a map of Benghazi that clearly labeled and located the

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/cia-installation-hit-in-libya-terror-attack/#ixzz2A3UZMhU7

[apples]

New details emerge of second U.S. facility in violent Benghazi  article date....oct 10th

Defenses at the second site largely held and unlike the temporary consulate, its grounds were not overrun. However, two U.S. security officials, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were killed there in what U.S. officials described as an unlucky mortar strike. The rest of the contingent eventually escaped to Benghazi's airport.

The assertions that the second site had relatively sophisticated defensive measures could raise additional questions about why the nearby consulate was not further reinforced given the volatile security environment in Benghazi.

Rex Ubben, whose son David was badly wounded in the attack on the second site and is being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, said his son had described an intense, sophisticated attack there.

The mortar fire's accuracy "indicates to me that someone was either very, very good, highly trained and skilled, or that the mortar was already set up and pointed at the 'safe house' and only minor adjustments were needed," Ubben, a 24-year Air Force veteran, told Reuters by email last week, relaying his son's account.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top U.S. officials have defended security measures in place at the temporary consulate, although those claims came under harsh attack by committee Republicans on Wednesday.

Officials investigating the attacks say there is evidence the State Department wanted to maintain a low security profile at the temporary consulate - which was the public face of the U.S. presence in the city - to project an appearance of normality in U.S. dealings with Libya.

Because Benghazi was regarded as lawless and violent, with a heavy presence of Islamic militants, the second compound's security measures included cameras and sensors and its security force included well-trained Americans like Doherty and Woods, the two former Navy SEALs who died in

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/11/us-usa-libya-annex-idUSBRE89A02D20121011

[apples]

Benghazi's meaning for Israel and the Mideast  article by Dore Gold

wrote already on July 30, 2012 that what was happening in Libya and across the Middle East was nothing less than a comeback for al-Qaida, which had created "its largest safe havens and operational bases in more than a decade across the Arab world." He specifically pointed to AQIM, which he said was now "the best armed al-Qaida franchise in the world."

Thus AQIM is on the rise. The commander of the U.S. Army's African command said this July that it was al-Qaida's "wealthiest affiliate." The new AQIM network has been at war with Mauritania, but it also directly threatens Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and whatever government arises in Libya. Their operatives have been caught in Spain and will eventually pose a threat to France and Western Europe. Given this background, it is understandable how Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed the U.S. security assistance team in Libya, could conclude in recent Congressional testimony about al-Qaida in Libya: "Their presence grows every day. They are certainly more established than we are."

While the debate rages in America over whether there was a cover-up of what actually happened in the U.S. compound in Benghazi, there are important trends being missed. There are considerable signs that al-Qaida elements are on the rise in much of the Middle East, and especially in the area of Benghazi in eastern Libya. Indeed, in the first half of 2012, attacks on foreigners in Benghazi escalated: The British ambassador's convoy was assaulted in June by terrorists who used rocket propelled grenades.

Al-Qaida has techniques which it has used to build up its capabilities through local jihadi organizations. These groups, which identify with aspects of its ideology, start out as local militias in the Gaza Strip or in Libya, but nonetheless come into contact with global jihadi networks which provide weapons, combat skills, and finally recruit them into the al-Qaida network. Clearly what happened in Libya did not stay a local phenomenon but radiated out to the entire region and beyond.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2718