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Did the Syrian Weapons Pipeline Lead to Ambassador Stevens’ Death?

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 21, 2012 @ 3:05 pm In The Point | 3 Comments

Let’s begin with the obvious. A series of attacks against US diplomatic facilities were launched on and around September 11 by groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. The most violent of these attacks took place in Benghazi, where the consulate had very little security and no domestic law enforcement in the city making it a ridiculously easy target.

The question that has been asked is whether the Benghazi attack had a more specific motive beyond Al Qaeda demonstrating its reach and reminding its supporters that it was not dead just because its former figurehead had been killed in Pakistan.

A widely circulated article by Clare Lopez suggests that Ambassador Stevens’ involvement in smuggling Libyan weapons to Syrian Jihadists somehow caused him to be targeted by Ansar Al-Sharia. Lopez raises a number of questions, but doesn’t really provide any answers or a clear motive for why this would have taken place.

It is marginally more plausible that Stevens and the consulate were targeted not because Ambassador Stevens was helping the Jihadists smuggle weapons into Syrian from Libya, but because the Benghazi consulate was keeping tabs on the smuggling. We know that there were significant intelligence assets in the Benghazi consulate and in Libya in general. About the only thing for them to do in Benghazi would have been to keep an eye on the Islamist militias in the city.

The Benghazi consulate would never have interfered in the smuggling, but the intelligence they passed on might have led the US to pressure Turkey into filtering out heavy weapons from the weapons being supplied to the Syrian rebels. Or the Jihadists might have feared that this was going on, which amounts to the same thing, the consulate was acting as the eye of the United States and the decision was made to put it out as part of a larger sweep of attacks against American interests.

Of course all this is speculation. As long as the Obama Administration continues stonewalling Congressional investigators, crucial facts remain wanting and that opens the door for endless theorizing. But when all that theorizing is done, it’s important to remember that Jihadists need no special reason for killing Americans. Regardless of who is in power, they view infidels as the enemy and all foreigners as legitimate targets.

The Benghazi consulate was poorly defended and that made it a prime target. Even if the particular set of circumstances had not come together, more attacks would have taken place regardless, because it was an American diplomatic facility with light protection sitting in the middle of a city run by Islamist militias. It’s was never a matter of whether, but of when.

The final word belongs to J.E. Dyer who focuses attention on the reason why we still don’t have all the facts, and instead of getting answers, are forced to construct narratives from material leaking through into the press.

But the most important take-away from the Benghazi fiasco is the nakedly cynical, self-serving behavior of the Obama administration.  Four Americans were killed, in a terrorist attack on a facility that should have been protected better, but – because of decisions made by Obama’s appointees – was not.  Instead of manning up to what happened and providing the answers that are owed to the people, the administration first built a specious narrative about why the attack was launched, as if that was what mattered, and then spent weeks claiming that it was too early to answer questions on almost any aspect of the topic.

Now the administration has directed senior military officers not to answer questions from Congress.  There is no conceivable reason for this, other than to stymie progress on the House’s inquiry.


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