Wednesday October 24, 2012, 2:40 pm
From the article:




The immediate source of the emails was the State Department’s Operations Center. The missives were addressed to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI. The date of transmission was Sept. 11.

The first email, sent at 4:05 p.m. Washington time (10:05 p.m. Benghazi time), was dispatched 20 to 30 minutes into the fray and carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU,” shot for “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi,” was transmitted at 4:54 p.m. Washington time. The two-sentence message read, “Embassy in Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared. A response team is on site attempting to locate COM personnel.”

A third email was received two hours later at 6:07 p.m. Washington time. It carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

...


The emails fly in the face of claims made for days following by the White House, including the president himself, that the attacks were likely a spontaneous protest provoked by an anti-Muslim film. As Hosenball notes, officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists” but were loath to lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda.

Friday October 26, 2012, 10:42 am
thanks for sharing

Friday October 26, 2012, 11:50 am
I think this Hot Air article is just that, a lot of Hot Air! They seem to be very anti Obama! But thanks for sharing.

Friday October 26, 2012, 12:18 pm
Sonja, after the Benghazi tragedy and its cover up by the White House and Obama himself, quite a few people became anti-Obama! He really deserves impeachment for the incompetence leading to the death of the ambassador Stevens.

Friday October 26, 2012, 12:57 pm

GOP's Benghazi Smoking Gun Goes Up in Smoke
—By Adam Serwer | Thu Oct. 25, 2012 8:12 AM PDT
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/10/benghazi-libya-state-emails

When a set of State Department emails were released Wednesday, one reporting that a local Islamist militia had claimed responsibility for the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, conservatives thought they had the smoking gun that the Obama administration had lied about what had occurred.

Reuters reported Wednesday that on September 11—the day of the attack—a State Department email with the subject header "Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack" was sent to the White House. The message stated that "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli." Case closed, conservatives said: The White House had engaged in a cover-up.

"[T]he president and his advisers repeatedly told us the attack was spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim video and that it lacked information suggesting it was a terrorist assault," wrote Jennifer Rubin, president of the Washington Post's Mitt Romney fan club. "Bottom line? Barack Obama was willfully and knowingly lying to the American people," wrote Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. (Of course, the idea that the video played a role is not inconsistent with the idea that the attack was an "act of terror," a phrase the president himself used to describe the attack in the days following the incident.)

There's only one problem—well, actually, there are many, but one big one: The email appears to have been incorrect. Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, the group suspected of attacking the consulate, never claimed responsibility for the assault. In fact, according to Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who monitors jihadist activity online, Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi didn't post about the attack on its Facebook or Twitter page until September 12, the day after the attack. They expressed their approval of the incident, but they didn't take credit; they did imply members of the group might have been involved, according to Zelin, stating, "Katibat Ansar al-Sharia [in Benghazi] as a military did not participate formally/officially and not by direct orders." The statement also justifies the attack by implicitly alluding to the anti-Islam video linked to unrest in other parts of the Middle East, saying, "We commend the Libyan Muslim people in Benghazi [that were] against the attack on the [Muslim] Prophet [Muhammad]."

"It is possible staffers were mistaken in the heat of the moment," wrote Zelin in an email to Mother Jones. "Not only was there no statement from ASB until the following morning, but it did not claim responsibility." (Zelin provided Mother Jones with screenshots of AAS's Twitter feed and Facebook page, which he also provided to CNN. It's possible the posts could have been deleted, but there's no way to prove that.)

Even if the State Department email had been accurate, conservatives pounced on it eagerly without underlying corroboration, thereby providing a pretty good example of how complicated intelligence analysis can be and why it's a bad idea to simply jump on a piece of information that fits your preconceived biases. The email was just one piece of information gathered in the aftermath of the attack. While the White House's initial explanation that the attack had begun as a protest turned out to be wrong, the email itself doesn't bear on two of the major remaining questions: what role the video played and whether the attack was planned or spontaneous.

You'd think that this would be obvious, but in the future it's a good idea to remember that just because someone posts something on Facebook, that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. Even better: Just because someone said someone posted something on Facebook doesn't mean it's true. Even if you really, really want it to be.

Friday October 26, 2012, 1:34 pm
Noted !!

Friday October 26, 2012, 2:13 pm
Even if true, Walter, your article does not contradict the fundamental problem with the Administration's presentation of this matter to the public: it knew very quickly that the assault in Benghazi was a deliberate and even planned attack but spent almost two weeks telling the American people that it was the accidental violence of a mob stirred up by a Youtube video. Did it assert facts it knew to be false in order to cover up the Administration's failures in protecting its personnel, at least until after the election? I would like to think differently but it is hard to understand the Administration's motives in lying to the American people.

Friday October 26, 2012, 3:54 pm
Who knows always conspiracy theories we will never know

Friday October 26, 2012, 4:10 pm

You don't know what information is kept from you,,

Friday October 26, 2012, 5:34 pm
The Obama administration has lied through its teeth about the Benghazi attack and most of the American media has been more than happy to give them a free ride on this one.
I am incensed that four young men were sacrificed for a reason I don't understand when they could have been saved from this attack if anyone had had the will to take some form of action.
Thanks Paula.

Friday October 26, 2012, 7:30 pm
Obama and gang sat there and watched those Americans die. They asked repeatedly for help and nothing was done to send them assistance. No propaganda here. Just truth but those of you still drinking the koolaide cannot tell the difference. Very sad indeed.

Friday October 26, 2012, 8:41 pm
Paula M I draw attention to the fact that it was your mob that covered up, and stopped the sailors on the U S S Liberty from reporting or even talking about the deliberate and illegal attack on their ship killing, and wounding many personnel, and wrecking the vessel by ISRAEL. This was not just for a few weeks but many years before the sailors were recognised for their gallantry, and even then the U S Government will not admit that it was complicit in the attack or its following cover up. riends like Israel,you can do without.

Saturday October 27, 2012, 12:39 am
reece C. It's rare to see someone on Care 2 with your wit, brilliant repartee and persuasive skills. Have you ever thought of standing for the Liberal party? They need good name-callers.
Tom Edgar. You have an amazing gift for posting totally irrelevant nonsense.
God help America if you two are typical representatives.

Sunday October 28, 2012, 9:09 am
Tom Edgar, why are you bring up USS Liberty? This error happened long time ago, Israel apologized, paid compensation to the sailors and for the ship.

In comparison, when Arab terrorists attacked USS Cole, they did not apologize, did not pay compensation and never hid the fact that they attacked USS Cole deliberately. Same with Arab militants attack on sleeping US peacekeepers in Beirut: Arab militants killed 273 Marines, never apologized and never paid compensation.

Errors do happen between the friends, and if friends do apologize and compensate losses, they remain friends. Enemies attack deliberately, do not apologize and do not offer compensation.

Same guys who killed US Ambassador Stevens now, killed Americans then. They are new Obama's "Friends", or we are told so to believe in his outreach.