Submitted by: Kathy Hawkins
Where Were The Marines?
Libyan Security Team Fingered Ambassador
In the confusion surrounding the murders of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya yesterday, the Libyan government — which exists due to the military intervention of the US and NATO — initially left the impression that loyalists to dead dictator Moammar Qaddafi conducted the assassinations.
CBS, however, now reports that the Libyan government has changed its tune. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the other diplomatic personnel got moved to another building by Libyan security forces when the consulate was attacked, and then betrayed by them to the attackers:
Military officials told CBS News an anti-terrorism team of U.S. Marines was being deployed to Libya to help secure U.S. interests in the country following the attack. The State Department said, however, that no Americans were remaining at the facility in Benghazi. State officials would not confirm how many Americans were evacuated, or to where.
Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said the four Americans were killed when the angry mob, which gathered to protest a U.S.-made film that ridicules Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, fired guns and burned down the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
He said Stevens, 52, and other officials were moved to a second building, deemed safer, after the initial wave of protests at the consulate. According to al-Sharef, members of the Libyan security team seem to have indicated to the protesters the building to which the American officials had been relocated, and that building then came under attack.
Stevens, 52, was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979.
