When is Jim in NJ

[spence]

Originally Posted by detbuch

No, the information they had at the time did not at all conclude that it was a spontaneous protest against a video.

The Rice comments that caused such a fluppor never "concluded" it was a spontaneous protest...

What she said was:

But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.

We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to — or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in — in the wake of the revolution in Libya are — are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there.

Which given the NYT article and the recent Senate report (and so much other reporting) seems quite plausible.

What I don't understand is, what prohibits a terror attack's timing from being linked to furor over a video? Isn't it quite possible they've been thinking of an attack for some time and the events around the region -- there was more than just Egypt -- gave them some inspiration? Ham's remarks about no specific intel on the attack would certainly back this thinking.

Also, isn't it quite believable that a bunch of heavily armed, battle hardened veterans of the civil war would be able to assemble rapidly and coordinate an attack with RPG's and accurate small arms fire as Ham describes? Hell, that's exactly what they had been doing against the Libyan army for the past year. Didn't the civil war actually start in Benghazi?

-spence