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Man this admid has their priorities straight dont they...
Last month's attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, in which U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died, underlined the fragility of a state struggling to emerge from the legacy of Gaddafi's 42-year rule. Libyans rose up against their leader during a wave of Arab revolts against entrenched rulers in early 2011, but they had to fight to remove him, with the help of a NATO bombing campaign. Most Libyans remain delighted that Gaddafi has gone and many voice cautious optimism about their country's prospects. But a year on, chaos still dogs the North African nation, as Shehata Awami, Benghazi's first elected governor can testify.
He quit after three months, caught between daily pressure, often backed by armed threats, from people demanding jobs or housing and a weak, unresponsive central government in Tripoli. "Once, several council members called me shaking with fear. A man demanding a house had told them: 'If I don't get what I want, I will walk into your building with two suitcases of explosives and blow all of you up'," Awami said. "Every couple of weeks I would send delegations to Tripoli to meet the government and ask for aid," he said. "And every time we were told: 'Later, tomorrow, we can't help now'." Shehata resigned in August to go back to his banking job.
Discontent is rife across Libya, not just in Benghazi, the cradle of the revolt. Gun culture has taken hold, residents say, citing carjackings, kidnappings, armed robberies and disputes leading to shootouts between rival groups. The latest fighting around the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid shows deep divisions persist. Tripoli often accuses Gaddafi loyalists of trying to destabilize its democratic path.
RAMPANT MILITIAS
The now-abandoned American consulate in Benghazi was set a little more than a mile away from the CIA base. Up to this point, that separate base was described by administration officials only as a "safe house" or "annex" to the nearby consulate. In reality, CIA agents and other intelligence officials were operating out of Benghazi conducting delicate missions, including the search for over 20,000 deadly shoulder-fired missiles previously owned by Muammar Qaddafi's Libyan forces.
The work they conducted to seize those deadly weapons, known as MANPADS, was part of a broader and public effort by the State Department to secure them. The major concern is those weapons could be used to bring down a commercial jet. These officials added that the number of CIA operatives in Benghazi clearly outnumbered that of the diplomatic staff. It took two military cargo aircraft to lift everyone out of Benghazi when the fighting was over. Both the CIA outpost and the consulate were attacked on Sept. 11. Two of the men killed, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were hit by indirect fire while defending the intelligence post, not the consulate.
One witness told Fox News that Doherty and Woods were found on the roof of the intelligence base manning a single machine gun that was caked in blood, suggesting they continued firing after they were hit by a mortar round approximately seven hours after the attack began. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and information analyst Sean Smith were also killed in the attack hours earlier at the consulate. In general, U.S. officials also say the consulate is better described as a diplomatic mission. It didn't carry out all the traditional roles of a consulate, such as issuing visas.
Revelations concerning just how sensitive operations were in Benghazi began to trickle out during the House oversight committee hearing two weeks ago with witnesses Charlene Lamb, a State Department official who heads diplomatic security, and Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary for management at State. As part of their testimony, the two presented a map of Benghazi that clearly labeled and located the so-called annex. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., both called a point of order, complaining that the map included information they were specifically instructed not to talk about.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-terror-attack/?test=latestnews#ixzz2AAvKp152
