Thread: Another US Embassy Under Siege

US consulate attack in Libya: the warning signs were there in Benghazi
About 24 hours before the mob attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, al-Qaeda’s leader made his first public statement for four months.

Libyan security members look at the damaged widescreen of a British ambassador to Libya Dominic Asquith's convoy car that was attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade in June. Photo: Getty Images
By David Blair, Alex Spillius7:50PM BST 12 Sep 2012
Ayman al-Zawahiri mourned the death of a leading commander from Libya and urged his followers to puncture the “arrogance” of the “evil empire, America”.
This taped missive first appeared on jihadist websites on Monday. On Tuesday, an armed assault claimed the lives of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his colleagues.
This sequence suggests there could have been more to the bloodshed in Benghazi than a spontaneous demonstration against a YouTube film that escalated out of control. It seems unlikely that an attack could have been planned and executed so quickly in direct response to Zawahiri’s words. But the evidence shows that armed groups in Benghazi have been trying to kill the representatives of Western countries for some time.
On June 11, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Sir Dominic Asquith, the British ambassador, as he drove through the city. He was unscathed, but two of his bodyguards were injured. Britain responded by closing its diplomatic office in Benghazi and withdrawing all UK staff. Five days earlier, unknown assailants had thrown an improvised explosive device at the gates of the US consulate in the middle of the night, causing no injuries.
As for the theory that the fatal incident was sparked by the YouTube video, no other protests of this kind are known to have occurred elsewhere in Libya. No mob gathered outside the US Embassy in Tripoli, the usual base of Chris Stevens, the late ambassador which, on the face of it, would have been a more logical target. Instead, the focus of the anger was the consulate in Benghazi, at a time when Mr Stevens happened to be visiting.
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A statement form the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-radicalisation think tank, suggested that the killing of the ambassador and his colleagues was a “well planned terrorist attack that would have occurred regardless of the demonstration”. A rocket-propelled grenade was fired during the assault on the diplomatic premises. As the Quilliam Foundation pointed out, these weapons are rare accessories “at a peaceful protest”.
All the evidence is circumstantial and no hard information points to the involvement of al-Qaeda. A statement from a local group styling itself “Ansar al-Sharia” was quick to claim responsibility. But this means little, since the chosen brand name is commonly adopted by extremists across the Muslim world.
None the less, the incident clearly shows the strength of anti-Western radicalism in Libya. Today, tens of thousands of armed men who fought in the war against Col Muammar Gaddafi’s regime are still on the streets. When the dictator fell last year, rebel militias had about 75,000 gunmen between them. Libya’s new government has drawn up an ambitious demobilisation plan, providing for the army and the interior ministry’s security forces to each recruit a third of this total. The rest are supposed to be found civilian jobs by the labour ministry.
But the process is is taking place with glacial speed and, as recently as June, a militia styling itself the “al-Awfea Brigade” surrounded Tripoli Airport, briefly forcing its closure.
Meanwhile, the fall of Gaddafi caused his arms dumps to be thrown open, flooding Libya with illegal weapons. Unsurprisingly, extremists from across the region seized their opportunity. “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” the North African branch of bin Laden’s terror network, plundered this new source of weapons, becoming so well armed that it was able to capture 300,000 square miles of Mali earlier this year, in concert with local allies.
Libyan weapons have turned up as far away as Nigeria, flowing into the hands of Boko Haram, one of the most dangerous extremist groups in Africa. Israel believes that Libyan guns have even been smuggled into the Gaza Strip. As an unintended consequence of Gaddafi’s downfall, radicals from Algeria to Nigeria - and from Mali to the Sinai Peninsula - have become better armed and more dangerous.
Nowhere is this more true than inside Libya itself. In a country where the state is too weak to govern and guns are readily available, it was only a matter of time before anti-Western radicalism cost lives in Benghazi.

US consulate attack in Libya: the warning signs were there in Benghazi - Telegraph

Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-American anti-Muslim activist, managed in one week’s time to take an overlooked YouTube video featuring a lame attack on Islam and turn it into a flashpoint with violent extremists, with deadly consequences. As the New York Times reported last night, Sadek drew attention to the obscure video clip “in an Arabic-language blog post and an e-mail newsletter in English publicizing the latest publicity stunt of the Florida pastor Terry Jones, reviled in the Muslim world for burning copies of the Koran.” Within days the clip was making the rounds in Egypt, prompting denunciations from politicians and generating press coverage, and culminating in protests and a deadly attack in Libya.

Sadek is a supporter of ACT! for America, which believes that President Obama has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. The group rallied its supporters last month behind Michelle Bachmann’s anti-Muslim witch hunt against Huma Abedin and others. Here’s Sadek with ACT! For America president Brigitte Gabriel at one of the group’s 2010 events.

Sadek is a man of many interests. He’s a member of these groups, among many others: Islam is of the Devil, Warriors of Christ, and OBAMA IS THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER! Agree?. Sadek is also a fan of the Republican Party, George Bush, Allen West (for president no less!), and number of other Islamophobic, conservative and/or Republican institutions and leaders.
American Who Sparked Libya, Egypt Unrest Hates Obama, Hearts the GOP | rightwingwatch.org


If (a big If) Sadek stirred up this drivel in some sort of attempt to provoke the Islamic world, and provoke an anti-Obama backlash at home, then all I can say is that it backfired horribly, not to mention with awful consequences. As for the alleged Producer of the clownish mockumentary-

The filmmaker, Sam Bacile, is in hiding. Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, the 56-year-old writer and director remained defiant, saying Islam was a cancer and that he intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

Read more: US ambassador among four killed over film insult to Muhammad

There is no record of any 'Sam Bacile'- who describes himself as Israeli American and a property developer in California- to be found in either the US or Israel.

Originally Posted by Chico the Fox

^ Probably not as many people as the movie that started all this though

You're proving my point. Tying their murderous celebration of 9-11 to some silly movie has people blaming some cooky Christian film maker and not the murderers.

Check this out - it is quite the jaw-dropping revelation to learn that there were no Marines guarding the U. S. consulate where Chris Stevens was brutally murdered yesterday. The country is in good hands with Obama and Clinton, eh?

^Many Consulates don't have Marine Security Guards.

^^That may be true but a nascent country like Libya with a barely functioning government would warrant guards even if they were US contractors. The problem I bet is they were local contractors and one of them set up the attack.

Originally Posted by attaboy

^^That may be true but a nascent country like Libya with a barely functioning government would warrant guards even if they were US contractors. The problem I bet is they were local contractors and one of them set up the attack.

With the boogyman dead, how do you keep the war on terror alive without allowing just a little bit of terror?

Originally Posted by Sailing into trouble

As sad as it is when people die through violence why would the American's not be ready for an attack? Before this war hit American soil, embassies had been a favourite target. You do not have a marine presence in Libya? Perhaps a gamble aimed at not provoking an attack that failed?

There is/was a Marine Security Guard presence at the Embassy in Libya. There was not one at the Consulate. Consulates are small, sattelite Embassies in parts of the country other than the capital, which is where the main diplomatic presence, the Embassy, is located. Consulates are small, and usually only manned by a handful of people. On occasion, they are guarded by local hire guards. Example: The Embassy in Bangkok has Marines; the Consulate in Chiang Mai does not.

Originally Posted by Necron99

Originally Posted by Davis Knowlton

Originally Posted by Sailing into trouble

As sad as it is when people die through violence why would the American's not be ready for an attack? Before this war hit American soil, embassies had been a favourite target. You do not have a marine presence in Libya? Perhaps a gamble aimed at not provoking an attack that failed?

There is/was a Marine Security Guard presence at the Embassy in Libya. There was not one at the Consulate. Consulates are small, sattelite Embassies in parts of the country other than the capital, which is where the main diplomatic presence, the Embassy, is located. Consulates are small, and usually only manned by a handful of people. On occasion, they are guarded by local hire guards. Example: The Embassy in Bangkok has Marines; the Consulate in Chiang Mai does not.

But really, not having dedicated armed security in CM is a little bit different than not having it in a freakin militant hotspot in a country just emerging from a civil war and awash in war weapons.

Agree completely. Since this is a Thai forum, I was just using CM as an example of the Embassy/Consulate relationship - I was certainly not justifying having an undefended and probably unnecessary Consulate in Libya out there all on their own.

Originally Posted by Necron99

Pawns Gambit. May not have expected to lose the bishop, but he must have been on someones shit list to get sent there in the first place.

Not at all, and it does not take much effort to find out, try that before you post.

Christopher Stevens -

He served twice previously in Libya, as the Deputy Chief of Mission from 2007 to 2009 and as Special Representative to the National Transitional Council from March 2011 to November 2011 during the Libyan revolution. He arrived in Tripoli in May 2012 as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.[2]

Christopher Stevens (diplomat) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by sabang

Whilst I wouldn't describe this as a boost for the Obama campaign, Mitt's hamfisted response certainly was.

Hamfisted? Try again as that''s another FAIL!

Administration officials: Romney was right, that statement from the Cairo embassy was awful.

You gotta get yer nose outa that State Controlled Media, sabang..

Yemeni protesters storm US embassy
13/09/2012

Yemeni protesters, angry over a film mocking Islam, on Thursday stormed the complex of the US embassy in Sanaa, defying efforts by riot police to hold them at bay, an AFP correspondent said.


Yemeni protestors take part in an anti-terror demonstration in Sanaa on September 12. Yemeni protesters, angry over a film mocking Islam, on Thursday stormed the complex of the US embassy in Sanaa, defying efforts by riot police to hold them at bay, an AFP correspondent said.

Protesters torched a number of diplomatic vehicles as security forces used water cannons and warning shots in a bid to drive them out.

Police had earlier fired warning shots to disperse a few thousand of protesters as they approached the main gate of the mission.

"O, Allah's messenger... O, Mohammed," protesters chanted.

The attack comes two days after four Americans including the ambassador were killed when a Libyan mob attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, and protesters in Cairo tore down the Stars and Stripes and replaced it with a black Islamic flag.

The low-budget movie, "Innocence of Muslims" in which actors have strong American accents, portrays Muslims as immoral and gratuitously violent.

It pokes fun at the Prophet Mohammed and touches on themes of paedophilia and homosexuality, while showing him sleeping with women, talking about killing children and referring to a donkey as "the first Muslim animal."

bangkokpost.com

I seem to remember that 200 Marines were killed in Lebanon in 1983 in a suicide attack. This happened under Reagan's watch but I don't see this as his foreign policy failure. There really is no amount of planning that can prevent a highly motivated terrorist from wreaking havoc, Marines present or not.

I don't think anyone can accuse me of being a fan of US military exploits, but all these fuckin apologists are starting to get to me.

The Danish cartoons elicited a similar if not worse reaction. Danish imperialism and military intervention/occupation?

Sure there is anger re the US on these grounds, but the underlying issue is not that, and until the apologists and spineless wonders stfu and start looking at the facts realistically, the problem will simply get worse.

There will always be an excuse.

All religions are a cancer. Islam is a particularly dangerous one.

Time to become loud and demand our right to freedom FROM religion. I'm not joking.

^I'm not certain. The Chancery building in an Embassy is "treated" as the home soil of the country involved, but I don't know if this also applies to a Consulate building. In fact, all of these positions are covered under the Geneva Conventions, which work only when civilized nations choose to abide by them. When the US Embassy in Tehran was seized and held, along with all of its diplomatically accredited personnel, the government of Iran supported this gross violation of international diplomatic protocol.

Meanwhile the attacks killing unarmed civilians, from the air, by drones continues day after day without a single line published in the "civilised" west's newspapers.

Looks like similar events are taking place in Tunisia, Sudan, Morrocco.

Gonna need some more destroyers with cruise missiles!

Originally Posted by OhOh

Meanwhile the attacks killing unarmed civilians, from the air, by drones continues day after day without a single line published in the "civilised" west's newspapers.

It's terribly sad, but their own people brought it on them.

there is something wrong with these "riots"...

they are not natural... its something else...