(Late) Ambassador Stevens complained many times about inadequate security in Benghazi

[Little-Acorn]

Ambassador Steven warned the Obama administration many times in cables and other communications, that security at the consulate in Benghazi was inadequate and the security situation was getting steadily worse.

The consulate was attacked by terrorists several times in the summer of 2012, including one incident in June 2012 where a bomb blew a 12-foot-wide hole inthe wall. Yet the Obama administration kept taking away American security personnel, replacing them in some cases with Libyan agents.

At the same time, President Obama was proudly announcing to voters before the election, that "Bin Laden is dead and GM is still alive!", apparently trying to convince them that he had defeated Al Qaeda. News of Al Qaeda's increasing attacks, and any increases in troops sent to Libya and other such areas, would not fit into the image Obama was trying to craft.

Is this why he left the consulate without adequate protection? So Obama could convince the voters he had achieved a military victory, when in fact he hadn't? Is this why Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans died?

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

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

by James Rosen
Published October 19, 2012

Cables show Amb. Stevens voiced concern about...

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."

Edited for Fair Use.

 

[depotoo]

herein is the truth, and hazlnut doesn't even have to go find it for himself. Thanks.

 

[waltky]

Was Ambassador Stevens Arming Syrian Rebels?...

More evidence of slain U.S. ambassador's secret activities
20 June`13 > Information may help explain deadly Benghazi attack

A Libyan weapons dealer from a group hired to provide security to the U.S. mission in Benghazi told Reuters he has helped ship weapons from Benghazi to the rebels fighting in Syria. The detailed account may provide more circumstantial evidence the U.S. Benghazi mission was secretly involved in procuring and shipping weapons to the Syrian opposition before the deadly attack last September that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. According to informed Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND on multiple occasions, the Benghazi mission was a planning headquarters for coordinating aid, including weapons distribution, to the jihadist-led rebels. After the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, the arming efforts shifted focus to aiding the insurgency targeting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, WND broke the story that murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself played a central role in arming rebels and recruiting jihadists to fight Assad, according to Egyptian security officials. In November 2012, Middle Eastern security sources further described both the U.S. mission and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi as the main intelligence and planning center for U.S. aid to the rebels, which was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Many rebel fighters are openly members of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida. The information may help determine what motivated the deadly attacks in Benghazi.

In an interview with Reuters published Tuesday, Libyan warlord Abdul Basit Haroun declared he is behind some of the biggest shipments of weapons from Libya to Syria. Most of the weapons were sent to Turkey, where they were then smuggled into neighboring Syria, he said. Haroun explained he sent a massive weapons shipment from the port in Benghazi in August 2012, days before the attack on the U.S. compound. The weapons were smuggled into Syria aboard a Libyan ship that landed in Turkey purportedly to deliver humanitarian aid. Ismail Salabi, a commander of the February 17 Brigade, told Reuters that Haroun was a member of the Brigade until he quit to form his own brigade. The February 17 Brigade provided external security to the attacked Benghazi U.S. compound, including the villa where Stevens lived when he was in Benghazi. Stevens held his last meeting with a Turkish diplomat in the compound and ultimately died there in the attack.

The February 17 Brigade is part of the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Al-Sharia, a militia that advocates the strict implementation of Islamic law in Libya and elsewhere. Ansar al-Sharia initially used Internet forums and social media to claim responsibility for the Benghazi attack. Later, a spokesman for the group denied it was behind the attack. Witnesses told reporters they saw vehicles with the group’s logo at the scene of the Sept. 11 attack and that gunmen fighting at the compound had stated they were part of Ansar al-Sharia. Some witnesses said they saw Ahmed Abu Khattala, a commander of Ansar al-Sharia, leading the attack. Contacted by news media, Khattala denied that he was at the scene. Meanwhile, a Libyan official speaking to Reuters said he had allowed weapons to leave the port of Benghazi for Syria.

MANPADS

See also:

In a Turnabout, Syria Rebels Get Libyan Weapons
June 21, 2013 > During his more than four decades in power, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya was North Africa’s outrageously self-styled arms benefactor, a donor of weapons to guerrillas and terrorists around the world fighting governments he did not like.

Even after his death, the colonel’s gunrunning vision lives on, although in ways he probably would have loathed. Many of the same people who chased the colonel to his grave are busy shuttling his former arms stockpiles to rebels in Syria. The flow is an important source of weapons for the uprising and a case of bloody turnabout, as the inheritors of one strongman’s arsenal use them in the fight against another. Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport arms from Libya to Syria’s opposition fighters. Libya’s own former fighters, who sympathize with Syria’s rebels, have been eager collaborators. “It is just the enthusiasm of the Libyan people helping the Syrians,” said Fawzi Bukatef, the former leader of an alliance of Libyan brigades who was recently named ambassador to Uganda, in an interview in Tripoli.

As the United States and its Western allies move toward providing lethal aid to Syrian rebels, these secretive transfers give insight into an unregistered arms pipeline that is difficult to monitor or control. And while the system appears to succeed in moving arms across multiple borders and to select rebel groups, once inside Syria the flow branches out. Extremist fighters, some of them aligned with Al Qaeda, have the money to buy the newly arrived stock, and many rebels are willing to sell. For Russia — which has steadfastly supplied weapons and diplomatic cover to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria — this black-market flow is a case of bitter blowback. Many of the weapons Moscow proudly sold to Libya beginning in the Soviet era are now being shipped into the hands of rebels seeking to unseat another Kremlin ally. Those weapons, which slipped from state custody as Colonel Qaddafi’s people rose against him in 2011, are sent on ships or Qatar Emiri Air Force flights to a network of intelligence agencies and Syrian opposition leaders in Turkey. From there, Syrians distribute the arms according to their own formulas and preferences to particular fighting groups, which in turn issue them to their fighters on the ground, rebels and activists said.

Crates of recoilless rifle rounds in a rebel cache in Idlib, Syria, bear the triangle symbol of arms sent to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Qatari C-17 cargo aircraft have made at least three stops in Libya this year — including flights from Mitiga airport in Tripoli on Jan. 15 and Feb. 1, and another that departed Benghazi on April 16, according to flight data provided by an aviation official in the region. The planes returned to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The cargo was then flown to Ankara, Turkey, along with other weapons and equipment that the Qataris had been gathering for the rebels, officials and rebels said. Last week the Obama administration announced that it had evidence that Mr. Assad’s military had used sarin nerve agent in multiple attacks, and that the United States would begin providing military aid to the rebels, including shipments of small arms. In doing so, the United States could soon be openly feeding the same distribution network, just as it has received weapons from other sources.

The movements from Libya complement the airlift that has variously used Saudi, Jordanian and Qatari military cargo planes to funnel military equipment and weapons, including from Croatia, to the outgunned rebels. On Friday, Syrian opposition officials said the rebels had received a new shipment of anti-tank weapons and other arms, although they give varying accounts of the sources of the recently received arms. The Central Intelligence Agency has already played at least a supporting role, the officials say. The Libyan shipments principally appear to be the work of armed groups there, and not of the weak central state, officials said. Mr. Bukatef, the Libyan diplomat, said Libyan militias had been shipping weapons to Syrian rebels for more than a year. “They collect the weapons, and when they have enough they send it,” he said. “The Libyan government is not involved, but it does not really matter.”

MORE

 

[CrusaderFrank]

What difference dies it make?

Bumps in the road, swept under the rug

 

[ScienceRocks]

The democratic party couldn't careless.

 

[Mr. H.]

Already ancient history, relegated to the Liberal archives as trite and trivial.

 

[Lakhota]

Hillary tried to warn Republicans.

 

[francoHFW]

OP- so did many other ambassadors in the ME, dupes...

 

[francoHFW]

42 other protests/attacks in the Islamic world around that time, and only Bengazi had nothing to do with that stupid RW video? SUURRE!

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Hillary tried to warn Republicans.

Obama went to Vegas to fund raise for Consulate Security, right?

 

[Mr. H.]

42 other protests/attacks in the Islamic world around that time, and only Bengazi had nothing to do with that stupid RW video? SUURRE!

You've got a future in politics, and would fit well into this administration.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

42 other protests/attacks in the Islamic world around that time, and only Bengazi had nothing to do with that stupid RW video? SUURRE!

You've got a future in politics, and would fit well into this administration.

few people know that FranCoWTF was Obama's Constitutional Law Professor

 

[Mr. H.]

...and erstwhile butt buddy.

 

[FireFly]

Anyone who lets a terror attack sway their vote is an idiot. You might as well let the terrorist decide who they want as our leaders. Soon we would all be Towel Head Muslims praying on rugs 3 times a day & living in squalor or dead.

 

[Lakhota]

The Benghazi crazy train seems to be slowing down...

 

[tinydancer]

The Benghazi crazy train seems to be slowing down...

Not at all. You really should get off your lib websites and walk into the real world. Put down the bong.

Multi tasking scandals isn't an issue here.

 

[Lakhota]

GOP's Benghazi Obsession Giving Cover To Actual Scandals | FDL News Desk

 

[Clementine]

Hillary tried to warn Republicans.

Did the "proposed cuts" make it through the senate? Did they even happen? If such cuts were made, it took a great deal of support from the Dems.

Shame that Obama can't blame his sequester for the cuts. Funny that the IRS is spending millions on stupid stuff and even handed out bonuses. The Obamas haven't slowed down one bit when it comes to their travels. The Muslim Brotherhood and Syrian rebels weren't affected by any cuts and we handed over a billion dollars and some pricy jets, tanks and weapons.

Seems the only time spending is cut is when it will hurt the public or anyone else who is expendable, like Ambassador Stevens.

If Stevens was arming the Syrian rebels, it wasn't something he did on his own. It would have been on orders from the Obama administration. It's not exactly a stretch to believe it considering that Obama wants to continue doing that now. Curious that Obama didn't show any concern for Stevens while attacks and threats were increasing in the area. He had to know Stevens was in danger. He arms fucking terrorists, but turns his back on our people when they are in need of support. Stevens was tossed to the wolves, or rather the terrorists. And no one was given permission to even try to help.

Any idiot would have known he was in danger before the 9/11 attack. There was a direct threat on Stevens' life that was posted on the internet. There is no way anyone in the Obama administration can claim ignorance of the threat or the fact that they made no attempt to help. It's almost as if they wanted Stevens out of the picture. A general claimed that there was a plot to stage the kidnapping of Stevens and exchange him for the Blind Shiek. I can't believe Stevens would agree to such a thing and the fact that he kept requesting more security demonstrates that he knew nothing of the plot. Unfortunately for some evil people, our brave Marines tried to help and possibly thwarted the attempted kidnapping. It does make perfect sense that the terrorists thought they were double crossed and then killed Stevens. We had more troops ready to go kick some ass, but they were stopped. Wouldn't want to hurt the radical Muslim terrorists.

I know liberals only find their own conspiracy theories credible, but the evidence here is overwhelming. If no one in the Obama administration knew of the threats Stevens received or his pleas for more security, then they are too inept to be in office. I don't think they are as ignorant as they claim and the truth is that they know far more than they will ever be willing to admit. The whole reason for the lies after the attack were to divert from the truth. That truth would hurt them very much or they wouldn't have tried so hard to keep it hidden. Only the mind numbed supporters are willing to drop a matter without any explanation.

Trying to blame proposed cuts for the death of Stevens is too assinine to discuss. This was an exceptional case and he should have simply been removed from the area. Other countries got their people out, but the Obama administration kept Stevens there and even decreased security right before the attack. The only explanation that makes sense is that they were helping to plan the staged kidnapping. They are either involved in this or complete idiots. Take your pick, but either way, people need to resign.

 

[9thIDdoc]

(Late) Ambassador Stevens complained many times about inadequate security in Benghazi


Obviously he was dead right.