General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf you want to know what happened in Libya, read this.
This is a fairly long and detailed account of the attacks.
Libya rescue squad ran into fierce, accurate ambush
Published: Wednesday, 12 Sep 2012 | 5:13 PM ET
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - A squad of U.S. troops dispatched by helicopter across the Libyan desert to rescue besieged diplomats from Benghazi on Wednesday ran into a fierce overnight ambush that left a further two Americans dead, Libyan officials told Reuters.
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Miscommunication which understated the number of American survivors awaiting rescue - there were 37, nearly four times as many as the Libyan commander expected - also meant survivors and rescuers found themselves short of transport to escape this second battle, delaying an eventual dawn break for the airport.
Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.
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"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said, adding to suggestions by other Libyan officials that at least some of the hostility towards the Americans was the work of experienced combatants. "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/49009776
redgreenandblue
(2,088 posts)I have been suspecting that the attacks should be understood in the context of the wars.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)The US has been allowing AQ to freely operate in Libya and other areas, such as Syria, where we coordinate with Saudi-backed extremist groups in regime change operations. That is apparent from the following recent CNN article.
Read the article. It's very interesting, as it all but points out how regime change leads to the creation of safe areas where Jihadis have free range of operation, and apparently, aren't attacked by armed drones. As a result, AQ is able to organize larger, better coordinated operations such as the one that killed the American Ambassador and some US troops sent to rescue him.
Now, we see how regime change creates a dilemma. Given, if we were to take out al-Qaeda and linked groups inside Libya, we would be destroying the very same Saudi-GCC financed militias that we help in our effort to overthrow the Syrian regime. But, unfortunately, that gives Al-Qaeda breathing space to reconstitute and attack upon us. I think we will are now presented with a choice:
A senior Libyan official told CNN in June that the United States had flown surveillance missions with drones over suspected jihadist training camps in eastern Libya. The official said that, to the best of his knowledge, they had not been used to fire missiles at militant training camps in the area.
Another Libyan official told CNN at the same time that five radical Islamist militant commanders were operating in the Derna area, with 200 to 300 men under their command in camps in the area. Ironically, Christopher Stephens -- the U.S. ambassador killed in Tuesday's attack -- had written extensively about the rise of Salafist factions in and around Derna in a 2008 diplomatic cable.
As CNN has previously reported, one of militant commanders, according to several sources, is Abdulbasit Azuz, a long-time associate of al-Zawahiri. Azuz was dispatched by al-Zawahiri to Libya from Pakistan's tribal areas in the spring of 2011 to create a foothold for al Qaeda in Libya, the sources say.
Azuz is a veteran jihadist who fought the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, according to several sources. He later to moved to the United Kingdom, where he increasingly came on the radar screen of British security
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Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/world/omar-abdul-rahman-brigades-ambassador-christopher-stevens-targeted-by-pro-al-qaeda-group#ixzz26LWt3Yw8