m***@facts.only.now
2012-10-28 19:32:45 UTC
Benghazi Timeline
The long road from "spontaneous protest" to premeditated terrorist
attack.
Summary
The question wont go away: Did President Obama and administration
officials mislead the public when they initially claimed that the
deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began
spontaneously in response to an anti-Muslim video?
The question surfaced again on Oct. 25 more than six weeks after the
incident when government emails showed the White House and the State
Department were told even as the attack was going on that Ansar
al-Sharia, a little-known militant group, had claimed credit for it.
We cannot say whether the administration was intentionally misleading
the public. We cannot prove intent. There is also more information to
come both from the FBI, which is conducting an investigation, and
Congress, which has been holding hearings.
But, at this point, we do know that Obama and others in the
administration were quick to cite the anti-Muslim video as the
underlying cause for the attack in Benghazi that killed four U.S.
diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. And they
were slow to acknowledge it was a premeditated terrorist attack, and
they downplayed reports that it might have been.
What follows is a timeline of events that we hope will help put the
incident into perspective. We call attention in particular to these
key facts: http://factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/
The long road from "spontaneous protest" to premeditated terrorist
attack.
Summary
The question wont go away: Did President Obama and administration
officials mislead the public when they initially claimed that the
deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began
spontaneously in response to an anti-Muslim video?
The question surfaced again on Oct. 25 more than six weeks after the
incident when government emails showed the White House and the State
Department were told even as the attack was going on that Ansar
al-Sharia, a little-known militant group, had claimed credit for it.
We cannot say whether the administration was intentionally misleading
the public. We cannot prove intent. There is also more information to
come both from the FBI, which is conducting an investigation, and
Congress, which has been holding hearings.
But, at this point, we do know that Obama and others in the
administration were quick to cite the anti-Muslim video as the
underlying cause for the attack in Benghazi that killed four U.S.
diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. And they
were slow to acknowledge it was a premeditated terrorist attack, and
they downplayed reports that it might have been.
What follows is a timeline of events that we hope will help put the
incident into perspective. We call attention in particular to these
key facts: http://factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/