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The Obama administration faces a week of challenging inquiries about the timeline of the assassination of Chris Stevens and his aide and two bodyguards in Benghazi on Tuesday 11 September. I have written with my best information that the attack was an Al Qaeda op launched after planning, financing, and commanding by local jihadists who struck out of revenge for the death of a local hero, the murderous Abu Yahya al-Libi. Al-Libi's older brother is a senior commander in the Cyrenaica gangs. However, my remarks are on my sources from the region. CBS News offers the remarks of the elected president of the Libyan Assembly, President Mohammed al-Megarif, and Megarif argues confidently that the strike was a long-planned Al Qaeda plot launched by "foreigners." Al-Megarif's presentation looks to be supported in part by a grotesquely cruel video posted by "abdalader fadl" that claims to be a one-minute glimpse of Chris Stevens being dragged from the safe house while the gangs shout "Allahu Akbar." Is Stevens dead in the video? There are claims in Arabic on the mobile phone soundtrack, according to translators, that some voices claim Stevens is still alive (see below). If this video is confirmed accurate -- and I am asking my sources -- then alarm bells will go off about who the faces are in the video. Every one of them is a suspect assassin and a kin of Cain, and it is incumbent on US and Libyan authorities to launch the manhunt.
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Benghazi and the Election.
What is important for the last fifty days of the presidential election is that al-Megarif presents a narrative that is profoundly counter to the White House version offered so far. To this point in the campaign, OFA has been satisfied to promote the re-election line that Candidate Obama killed Bin Laden in order to dominate the national security theme. Now OFA must deal with not only flag-burning and embassy-storming across the ummah, but also the facts of the Libyan-launched Al Qaeda assassination that remains unexplained. There is huge opportunity here for the Romney campaign and GOP to make the case that POTUS Obama has wrong-footed the Arab Spring and now exposes Americans to an Al Qaeda offensive. Will the Republican agents act effectively? Unknown.
Susan Rice Incoherent.
The Obama administration must deal with the apparent fact that Al Qaeda, after 11 years of trying to strike successfully on the 9/11 anniversary, has achieved a gigantic agitprop victory. The first effort to explain away the Benghazi fail was to send UN Ambassador Susan Rice on to the Sunday shows to assert the false narrative that the Benghazi attack was not an Al Qaeda op but rather a protest against the Cairo provocation video. This does not stand up to the facts nor to al-Megarif. Susan Rice failed to be coherent, let alone convincing, and is now given the hook amid laughter. Who of the OFA elite will try with the next revision of the assassination of an American ambassador on 9/11 planned for weeks as revenge for the drone kill of an Al Qaeda murderer?