Wednesday, September 19, 2012

White House hedges on claim anti-Islam YouTube video caused Benghazi attack

White House spokesman Jay Carney took a half-step back from the administration’s widely derided claim that an anti-Islam YouTube video prompted the Sept. 11 jihadi attack in Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.
He also took a half-step toward admitting a failure by the administration, saying “Libya is a very volatile place … where there is an abundance of weapons, including heavy weapons.”
The recognition of loose weaponry is a tacit admission of the jihadis’ success in scooping up heavy armaments during the administration’s extended bombing attacks against former ruler Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.
The administration did not deploy troops to Libya, even as rebels, thieves and jihadis looted thousands of shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles, anti-tank rockets and machine guns.
The administration’s no-troops policy was different from President George W. Bush’s strategy in the 2003 Iraq campaign, where U.S. air attacks complemented a large ground force that secured a large percentage of Iraq’s huge supplies of weaponry and explosives.
Shortly before the 2004 election, the New York Times published a front-page article slamming the Bush administration for not securing explosives at Iraq’s Al Qa’qaa storage site, prior to the extended insurgency by Sunni tribes allied with the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.
In recent days, Libyan officials have testified the attack was conducted by a well-organized group, not by berserk protesters. News media broadcast footage of rocket-carrying jihadis outside the Benghazi consulate on the night of the attack.

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