[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

Could have been avoided? Well, that's a surprise. The review from a year ago already took State to task for systemic problems that contributed. Stevens turned down two offers for more protection from the military and at other times requested more from State. It appears to have been a confusing situation. What else is new?

That's the point. It is not new. What responsibility for "systemic Problems" does a CEO have? What kind of management by the top people allows for confusion? Where does the buck stop? In the real world CEO's are fired for allowing the "system" to be problematic, and for not attending to the confusion in performance of those beneath them. There were continuing problems and threats which were not addressed properly resulting in mission snafu. There was the inability to differentiate between friend and foe, or to understand the influence of Al Qaeda either by ignorance or by willful denial to support the narrative that Al Qaeda was no longer a serious threat. There was not a clear perception of what was going on in Benghazi and in Lybia after the overthrow of Qadaffi. There were obvious problems which others beside State and the Administration clearly saw. Wouldn't a competent commander in chief take heed of all the differing views, the confusion, the dangers, and at the very least, provide the proper security? Or was the agenda more important than the safety? And is the viability of the agenda now even less clear that policy is in tatters?

Leading from behind waits for disaster to happen in order to "fix" it.

The new Senate report reads.

"It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attacks or whether extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. Some intelligence suggests the attacks were likely put together in short order, following that day's violent protests in Cairo against an inflammatory video, suggesting that these and other terrorist groups could conduct similar attacks with little advance warning."

This follows the initial evidence that the video was a catalyst exploited by heavily armed extremists. Didn't Obama use the word "terror" just the following day?

Language can be so deceptive. Replace the word "catalyst" with the word "tool", and the connection between the video and the attack becomes more plausible.

Are we not made to understand that "insults" to Islam will result in violent response. We were told in the NY Times article that "someone" had translated the video into Arabic, and then it was disseminated. Now why would "someone" do that? Wasn't "someone" aware of what would happen? Is it not more plausible that "someone" actually wanted the video to produce useful violent reactions for the cause of Jihad--that "someone" would actually be looking for such videos or articles or cartoons or anything else to use to provoke anger against the West? The video was disseminated as a "U.S." product, not just by some person who should have a fatwa placed on him and hunted and done away with. It would be interesting to find out who the "someone" is. Al Qaeda brand?

Are we to believe that some innocent, normal run-of-the-mill usually peaceful Muslims decided to orderly protest an embassy (which had been under threat), but all of a sudden, in the midst of peaceful protest decided, hey let's go kill and burn? Yeah, you can bet that the "short order" planning was a result of a larger plan to use the video as a tool and to be ready to respond to any opportunity it presented.

What may be new in the report is that it goes deeper into into a potential military response finding there were no feasible options.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Yeah, poor planning (as opposed to the better planning by the Al Qaeda brand) will result in "no feasible options".