Libyan attack: coordinated and planned?
It was not impassioned spontaneous combustion, inflamed by a video of the prophet Muhammed, as reported by a lot of media. That video had been on the internet for about a month, then picked up by Egyptian media on September 8th.
In the early going, media live reports showed what seemed like out of control mob violence. Reporting since then starting pointing toward a coordinated attack.
Consider these reports…
U.S. officials are investigating whether the murder Tuesday of the U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other American officials was a “coordinated” strike timed for the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks — and not the result of a protest against an anti-Islam film.
A senior administration official told Fox News they are exhaustively investigating every angle of the attack in Benghazi, and an earlier assault on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and there are early signs the Benghazi assault may have been planned. The official cautioned, though, that the administration has not jumped to any conclusions about what happened, saying it would be “premature” to do so.
But current and former U.S. lawmakers, and others, claimed Wednesday that the attack looked like a coordinated strike.
“Absolutely, I have no doubt about it. It was a coordinated, military-style, commando-type raid,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers told Fox News. Based on his own briefings, Rogers said “military movements” were involved.
“This was a well- planned, well-targeted event. No doubt about it,” Rogers said. He said the Al Qaeda-linked Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades is one group being looked at by officials.
Reuters was especially on this. But it’s interesting that since I first printed out the article, then saved it through updated versions, it changed halfway through this posting. Here’s where it stood at the time of posting. But the saved earlier version said this:
U.S. consular staff were rushed to a safe house after the initial attack, Libya’s Deputy Interior Minister Wanis Al-Sharif said. An evacuation plane with U.S. commando units then arrived from Tripoli to evacuate them from the house.
“It was supposed to be a secret place and we were surprised the armed groups knew about it. There was shooting,” Sharif said. Two U.S. personnel were killed there, he said. Two other people were killed at the main consular building and between 12 and 17 wounded.
So why did Reuters keep changing this report, especially as more evidence pointed to their earlier suspicion? This thing got changed more often than any news story I’ve followed lately, and they do often get changed.
This one stayed on message at last check:
The attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, may have been planned and organized in advance, U.S. government officials said on Wednesday.
The officials said there were indications that members of a militant faction calling itself Ansar al Sharia – which translates as Supporters of Islamic Law – may have been involved in organizing the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya’s second-largest city.
They also said some reporting from the region suggested that members of Al-Qaeda’s north Africa-based affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.
“It bears the hallmarks of an organized attack” and appeared to be preplanned, one U.S. official said…
A London think tank run by a former Libyan militant leader suggested on Tuesday that not only was the Benghazi attack “well planned,” but that it may have been retaliation for an American drone attack that killed a Libyan leader of al Qaeda’s core command group earlier this year.
The Quilliam Foundation said that 24 hours before the Benghazi incident, al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, distributed a video to militant websites in which he confirmed the death of his second in command, known as Abu Yahya al-Libi, and urged Libyans to avenge his killing.
The Statfor analyst I interviewed today concluded the same. Analyst Ashley Lindsey said ‘it’s being said that it was done as a retaliation attack by Al Qaeda remants for the drone strike that killed Libyan Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan June 4. This week Al Qaeda put out a video calling on Libyans to avenge his death.’ The fact that it happened on September 11 made it all the more targeted.
NRO weighed in on how coordinated it all appeared to be, and asked questions I had.
How did the Libyan know where the “safe house” was? Well, why don’t we start with Mr. Kodak-Moment [a ‘police guard taking pictures’] ask him? Second, it doesn’t sound like there were any U.S. forces protecting the ambassador at the time of the attack. They “arrived from Tripoli.” Was there a deliberate decision made to limit America’s security footprint in the region? If so, why?
These are all questions the MSM better start asking.
Mainstream media or not, journalists will be asking and investigating.
