NEW WAVE OF UNREST SWEEPS ISLAMIC WORLD
LIBYAN EMBASSY ATTACKED
AMBASSADOR STEVENS KILLED
Film "Innocence of Mohammad" or "The Desert Warrior" has inflamed
the Islamic World. Don't you just love to see our US flag! It's the
most recognizable flag in the world. People find so many uses for it!
* All photos and art provided by "Google Images".
by Felicity Blaze Noodleman
Poor Libya! The
small, little and inflammatory nation which has reinvented itself under seven
different flags since before 1911 in North Africa is in the news
headlines again. Why am I not surprised? I mean really; a country which is this volatile
deserves whatever may come their way.
This country seems to blow in the direction of the most profitable
influences of the world at large.
Now
they are in the cradle of a Muslim Renaissance which is sweeping across the Middle
East and North Africa and asserting their brand of Islam throughout the world and punctuating
the Koran with the power of explosives led by groups like Al-Qaida. These people seem to have a morbid taste for
violence. They just finished a
revolution to depose their dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi and they now seem to be opting for their own version of the Islamic "dark ages".
I have to tell you, “I was really expecting something like
this to happen now with our US Presidential election coming up”! Isn’t it appalling that so many nations have
become actively involved in one way or another with US politics. And they selected 9/11. Aren't they clever. In Libya’s case is it the politics of oil,
weapons and most certainly blackmail. It would be very profitable for them to get into a war with the US. I
always follow the money and what the money can buy. In this case, it
certainly is’t love.
The United States who is the most generous country in the
world giving food, medical aid, “nation building”, disaster relief and military
advisers when ever these services are needed, where ever in the world is being
attacked by militant Muslims yet again because of a movie. There are a lot of movies I don’t like either but I don’t
use it as an excuse for physical violence against whoever or whatever.
The real reason, as I’ve already mentioned seems to be the
politics of oil and money along with decades of US policy involving foreign aid
which has been lavished on these countries to purchase their friendship in the Middle
East. The politics of the world has
changed radically and I really think they feel as though they are no longer
going to be needed as they once were in the past. Especially now that the US is such a huge
budget crisis.
Maybe because of our budget crisis the United States should rethink how we carry out our diplomatic missions. In today's world with the advances of telecommunications is there really a need to have a US embassy in every country in the world? Most of the US diplomatic business could be accomplished by email, teleconferencing and telephone. Also remember that we have the United Nations as an avenue for diplomacy with nations of the world.
Therefor it is very reasonable to assume that maybe "Embassy's" have become a relic of the past. Closing them would realize a huge savings in revenue for our government. Only a few Embassy's in nations where the US is doing a lot of business might be necessary. After all, our country has closed many military bases and installations around the world and here at home and down sized US forces. I think this could work for embassy's as well. Yes; that's it - they need a serious down sizing or as they say in business they need to be "right sized"!
I’ve
assembled 4 news articles to be included for your consideration. First is an article from CNN about the movie
which has incited protests throughout the Islamic world and the bombing of the
US Embassy in Bengasi, Libya and else where. Two
articles from the Washington Post (Sept. 12 & 14) describes the bombing and President Obama and Secretary
Clinton’s response to the assaults against the embassy along with information reported on the fourth day of unrest throughout the region. The forth article describes the unrest and
protests of Muslims in the Islamic world from the New York Times.
Ambassador to Libya killed in attack of embassy in Bengasi, Libya.
j. Christopher Stevens
New details
emerge of anti-Islam film's mystery producer
By Moni Basu, CNN
updated 1:54 PM EDT,
Thu September 13, 2012
(CNN) -- Some
time in the summer, a small theater in Los Angeles screened a movie to which
hardly anyone came.
It was a
clunky film filled with scenes in a desert and in tents. The characters were
cartoonish; the dialogue gauche.
The actors
who'd responded to a July 2011 casting call thought they were making an
adventure film set 2,000 years ago called "Desert Warrior." That's
how Backstage magazine and other acting publications described it.
The
American-made movie, it turns out, was hardly an innocent Arabian Desert action
flick.
Instead,
the movie, backed by hardcore anti-Islam groups in the United States, is a tome
on Islam as fraud. In trailers posted on YouTube in July, viewers saw this:
scene after scene of the Prophet Mohammed portrayed as a womanizer, buffoon,
ruthless killer and child molester.
Islam
forbids all depictions of Mohammed, let alone insulting ones.
Staff and crew of film that ridiculed Muslims say they were
'grossly misled'
The Muslim
world erupted in rage.
Protesters
aired their anti-American anger in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Iran
Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories. They came after violent mobs attacked the U.S. Consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi
leaving the ambassador and three other Americans dead.
But as outrage
spread, the film's origins still remained murky. Whose idea was it? Who
financed it?
At the
heart of the mystery was the filmmaker himself, a man identified in the casting
call as Sam Bassiel, on the call sheet as Sam Bassil and reported at first by
news outlets as Sam Bacile.
But
federal officials consider that man to be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who was
convicted in 2009 of bank fraud.
The FBI
contacted the filmmaker because of the potential for threats, a federal law
enforcement official told CNN Thursday. But he is not under investigation.
With media
parked at is residence in Cerritos, California, Nakoula called the Los Angeles
County Sheriff's Department Wednesday night to report a disturbance, said
spokesman Steve Whitmore. He wanted local police to protect him.
When news
of his movie first broke, the filmmaker identified himself as Sam Bacile and
told the Wall Street Journal that he was a 52-year-old Israeli-American real
estate developer from California. He said Jewish donors had financed his film.
But
Israel's Foreign Ministry said there was no record of a Sam Bacile with Israeli
citizenship.
"This
guy is totally anonymous. At this point, no one can confirm he holds Israeli
citizenship, and even if he did we are not involved," ministry spokesman
Yigal Palmor said.
A search
by CNN of public records related to Bacile came up empty. A search of
entertainment records turned up no previous mention of a Sam Bacile, and the
directors and writers guilds had no listing for him.
CNN has
not been able to speak with the filmmaker.
A
production staff member who worked on the film in its initial stages told CNN
that an entirely different name was filed on the paperwork for the Screen
Actors Guild: Abenob Nakoula Bassely. A public records search showed an Abanob
B. Nakoula residing at the same address as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.
He
believed the filmmaker was a Coptic Christian and when the two spoke on the
phone during production, the filmmaker said he was in Alexandria, Egypt,
raising money for the film. There has been a long history of animosity between
Muslims and the minority Copts in Egypt.
Another
staffer who worked on the film said he knew the producer as Sam Bassil. That's
how he signed a personal check to pay staff.
The
staffer said he was "99% positive" that Sam Bassil was not Jewish. He
had quite a few religious pieces in his house, including images of the Madonna.
He was
married with two children -- the daughter helped during production and even
brought in lunch on a few occasions, the staffer said.
Neither
staffer wanted to be identified for security reasons.
The U.S.
Attorney's Office sent a copy of a 2009 indictment when CNN inquired about Sam
Bassil. Those court documents showed the bank fraud conviction for Nakoula
Basseley Nakoula.
Several
other aliases -- Mark Basseley Youssef, Yousseff M. Basseley, Nicola Bacily and
Malid Ahlawi -- were all listed as aliases in the indictment. Other court
documents listed Thomas J. Tanas, Ahmad Hamdy and Erwin Salameh also as
aliases.
Six things to know about the attack
In his
interview with the Wall Street Journal, the filmmaker characterized his movie,
now called "Innocence of Muslims," as "a political effort to
call attention to the hypocrisies of Islam."
"Islam
is a cancer," he said. "The movie is a political movie. It's not a
religious movie."
An actress
in the film, who asked not to be identified, told CNN that the original script
did not include a Prophet Mohammed character. She said she and other actors
complained that their lines had been changed.
She said
she spoke Wednesday with the producer.
"He
said he wrote the script because he wants the Muslims to quit killing,"
she said. "I had no idea he was doing all this."
She
described the movie's repercussions as a "nightmare," given the
outrage and deaths, and she regretted having a role. She said she was angry and
hurt by the lies.
The 79
other cast and crew members said they were "grossly misled" about the
film's intent.
YouTube restricts video access over Libyan violence
"The
entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the
producer," they said in a statement.
They said
they were "shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that
were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have
occurred."
The actress
said that the character of Mohammed in the movie was named George when it was
shot, and that after production wrapped she returned and read other lines that
may have been dubbed into the piece.
A member
of the production staff who worked on the film and has a copy of the original
script corroborated the woman's account. There was no mention of Mohammed or
Islam, the crew member said.
The
filmmaker told the Wall Street Journal Jewish donors contributed $5 million to
make the film. Based on the trailer, however, the amateurish movie appears to
have been produced on a low budget.
Anti-Muslim
activist Steve Klein, who said he was a script consultant for the movie, said
the filmmaker told him his idea was to make a film that would reveal
"facts, evidence and proof" about the Prophet Mohammed to people he
perceived as radical Muslims.
Klein said
the movie was called "Innocence of Bin Laden."
"Our
intent was to reach out to the small minority of very dangerous people in
California and try to shock them into understanding how dangerous Islam
is," Klein said.
"We
knew that it was going to cause some friction, if anybody paid attention to
it," he said.
But when
Klein went to the screening in the Los Angeles theater, no one was there.
"It
was a bust, a wash," he said.
Killing
shines light on Muslim sensitivities around Prophet Mohammed
But a
while later, the trailers were online. They were segments focusing on the
Prophet Mohammed and posted under the title, "Innocence of Mohammed."
The
trailers were translated into Egyptian dialects of Arabic, the New York Times
reported. Egyptian television aired certain segments.
And the fury
erupted.
Klein told
CNN Wednesday that the filmmaker, whom he called Sam Bacile, was in hiding.
"He's
very depressed, and he's upset," Klein said. "I talked to him this
morning, and he said that he was very concerned for what happened to the
ambassador."
The
Atlantic later quoted Klein as saying that Sam Bacile was a pseudonym. He said
he did not know Bacile's real name.
Klein is
known in Southern California for his vocal opposition to the construction of a
mosque in Temecula, southeast of Los Angeles, in 2010. He heads up Concerned
Citizens for the First Amendment, a group that contends Islam is a threat to
American freedom.
The
Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, says Klein, a former
Marine and Vietnam veteran, helped train militant Christian fundamentalists
prepare for war.
The movie
got even more notice after it was promoted by anti-Islam activists, including
Egyptian-born Coptic Christian Morris Sadek and Terry Jones, the Florida pastor
whose Quran-burning last year sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan.
Jones said
he had been contacted to help distribute the film.
"The
film is not intended to insult the Muslim community, but it is intended to
reveal truths about Mohammed that are possibly not widely known," Jones
said in a statement.
"It
is very clear that God did not influence him (Mohammed) in the writings of the
Quran," said Jones, who went on to blame Muslims' fear of criticism for
the protests, rather than the film.
Gen.
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Jones to ask him
to withdraw his support for the film, said Col. David Lapan, Dempsey's
spokesman.
"Jones'
support of the film risks causing more violence and death," Lapan said.
That fear
mounted as anger raged in the Muslim world and especially as Friday, Islam's
day of religious observance, fast approached.
CNN's
Jennifer Wolfe, Miguel Marquez, Brian Todd, Chelsea Carter and Tom Watkins
contributed to this report.
CNN
CNN
I think we over watered it!
U.S. officials: Attack on consulate in Libya may have been planned
By Karen DeYoungMichael BirnbaumWilliam Branigin, The Washington Post
The attack did not end until about 8:30 p.m.
Washington time, when Libyan security forces helped drive away the attackers.
Administration officials said they still were not sure Wednesday who the
attackers were, or if the Benghazi attack was related to protests over an
anti-Islamic movie at the U.S. embassy in Cairo the same day.
At some point during the attack, officials said,
Stevens was taken out of the building where he was last seen. But they did not
know how he got out, if Stevens was dead or alive when he left the compound, or
whether he was taken to a hospital.
The Associated Press reported that Stevens arrived at
a Benghazi hospital about 7 p.m. Eastern, and was pronounced dead later.
Doctors said he died of asphyxiation, due to smoke inhalation. U.S. officials
said that would have to be confirmed with an autopsy.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, said there is strong evidence that the attack was
planned.
“This was a well-armed, well-coordinated event,”
Rogers said in an interview on MSNBC. “It had both indirect and direct fire,
and it had military maneuvers that were all part of this very organized
attack.” Rogers referred to weapons that aimed directly at a target and those,
such as rockets and mortars, that are fired without a direct line of sight.
According to Firas Abdelhakim, a Libyan television
journalist who said he witnessed part of the attack, a group of several dozen
armed men mounted the assault.
Abdelhakim said he was about three miles from
consulate when he saw 20 to 30 cars driving toward the consulate shortly before
9:30 p.m. Tuesday.
When he reached the consulate, he said, he saw about
50 armed men gathering who were not carrying banners or chanting slogans. When
asked who they were, they described themselves variously as “Muslims defending
the Prophet” and “a group of Muslim youth” who were “defending Islam,”
Abdelhakim said.
He said he saw Libyan security forces — the February
17 Battalion — guarding the consulate, a walled-off villa compound with several
buildings, a swimming pool and one security watchtower on an unpaved side
street in a prosperous residential district of Benghazi.
The assault on the consulate started sometime between
10:30 and 11 p.m., and the two groups traded fire, Abdelhakim said.
Benghazi residents said the compound had never
previously had a major security presence around it.
Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif said
the security force was outgunned by the attackers, who joined a demonstration of
“hundreds” of people outside the consulate. He said the original demonstration,
which began as early as noon and escalated during the evening, was apparently
called to protest the offensive film.
Sharif said armed men “infiltrated” the protest, but
that the Libyan government did not believe they were Islamist militants.
Instead, he said, authorities suspect they were loyalists of slain former
strongman Moammar Gaddafi who were out to upend the country’s fragile political
situation.
“We are going through a war with people from the old
regime who are trying to destabilize security,” Sharif said. He also said the
Libyan government believes that the first shot came from within the consulate
compound, enraging the crowd. And he complained that the consulate should have
extracted its employees earlier in the day and taken them to hotels or another
secure location for safety.
Sharif said the consulate was completely burned and
looted. “The most we expected was taking down the American flag and burning
it,” he said. “We didn’t expect what happened to take place.”
The Defense Department has dispatched two Marine
antiterrorism security teams to Libya to reinforce security there, a senior
Marine official said. In a statement issued by the White House early Wednesday, Obama said he had directed an increase in security at
U.S. diplomatic posts around the world.
The FBI said in a statement that it has opened an
investigation into the deaths of the four Americans and the attack on the
consulate. It said investigators would work closely with the State Department
and “the appropriate government partners” in Libya.
“The FBI will not speculate on the facts and
circumstances surrounding the attacks,” the statement said.
A U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said all four of the dead were State Department civilians. About a
half dozen Americans were wounded in the attack, and it was not immediately
clear if any of them were military. No U.S. Marines were posted at the
consulate as part of its security detail, the official said.
The attack was the latest in a series of violent
assaults in Benghazi over the last several months — many, but not all, directed
against U.S. interests there.
Tuesday’s assault was the second on the U.S. Consulate
in Benghazi. On June 5, a bomb exploded outside the gates of the compound in
the first targeting of an American facility since the fall of Gaddafi last
year.
The following day in Benghazi, two British bodyguards
were injured in an attack on a convoy carrying the British ambassador to Libya.
Last month, unknown assailants attacked a compound of the International
Committee of the Red Cross in the Libyan port city of Misurata. No one was
injured in that attack.
A group allied with al-Qaeda has claimed
responsibility for several recent assaults in Benghazi. But there was no
immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s attack.
Obama said Wednesday morning that the United States
“condemns in the strongest possible terms this outrageous and shocking attack”
and is working with the Libyan government to secure U.S. diplomats and bring
the attackers to justice.
Appearing with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said: “We reject all efforts to
denigrate the religious beliefs of others, but there is absolutely no
justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand
together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.”
He said many Libyans have already joined that stand,
and he vowed, “This attack will not break the bonds between the United States
and Libya.” He stressed that Libyan security personnel had “fought back against
the attackers alongside Americans” and that other Libyans carried Stevens’s
body to the hospital and helped U.S. diplomats find safety.
Obama added: “We will not waver in our commitment to
see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice
will be done.”
Obama spoke as some Middle East analysts suggested
that the attack in Benghazi might have been launched as revenge for the death
of a top al-Qaeda militant who was killed by an American drone strike in
Pakistan in June.
Mathieu Guidere, a professor of Islamic studies at the
University of Toulouse in France and an expert on Islamist radicals, said
information from militant Web sites suggested that Libyan extremists seized on
the film to rally people around an attack on the consulate. He said the attack
appeared to be motivated by a recent call by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda
leader, to avenge the killing of Hassan Mohammed Qaed, better known as Abu
Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born cleric who was a key aide to Osama bin Laden.
Quillam, a respected British think-tank that monitors
extremist groups, said its sources in Libya and elsewhere in the region
described the attack as a well-planned assault that occurred in two waves and
was organized by a group of about 20 militants. The first wave involved driving
the Americans from the consulate, and the second was a coordinated attack using
a rocket-propelled grenade after they were taken to another location.
“These are acts committed by uncontrollable jihadist
groups,” said Noman Benotam, the president of Quillam.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian who took over as al-Qaeda leader
after bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani hideout in May,
issued a 42-minute video Monday acknowledging Libi’s death and calling on
Muslims, particularly fellow Libyans, to seek vengeance for the killing.
“With the martyrdom of Sheikh Hassan Mohammed Qaed,
may God have mercy on him, people will flock even more to his writings and his
call, God willing,” Zawahiri said in the video. “His blood urges you and
incites you to fight and kill the crusaders.”
Stevens, a longtime Middle East hand in the State Department, was named ambassador to Libya in May. He had worked
in Libya for a number of years, both before and after the fall of Gaddafi.
In an interview with The Washington Post in June,
Stevens said Libya’s emerging democracy faces a threat from small, violent
Islamist groups that reject elections.
“These are, for the most part, new groups that are
emerging after the revolution, and the Libyans themselves don’t know who they
are,” Stevens said. “Some of these groups are probably forming out of the
militias that grew out of the revolution, and they have access to arms, so that
is troubling.”
On the recent series of violent incidents in Libya,
Stevens said, “When people cross the line, it’s also a function of a lack of
strong state and police to enforce the law.”
Obama called Stevens a “courageous and exemplary
representative” of the U.S. government, who “selflessly served our country and
the Libyan people.”
“His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach
for liberty and justice,” Obama said.
Clinton said she had called Libyan President Mohamed
Yusuf al-Magariaf “to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in
Libya.”
The attack in Benghazi followed protests in
neighboring Egypt, where a group of protesters scaled the wall of the U.S.
Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday evening and entered its outer grounds, pulled down
an American flag, then tried to burn it outside the embassy walls, according to
witnesses. On Wednesday morning, a sit-in by several dozen protesters continued
outside the Cairo embassy.
The attack on the embassy in Cairo was apparently
prompted by outrage over an independent, anti-Muslim film made in the United
States. It illustrated a deep vein of anti-American sentiment, even though the
United States supported Arab Spring revolutions and was instrumental in
providing financial and diplomatic support for their newly-democratic
governments.
After his Rose Garden remarks, Obama headed to the
State Department with Clinton to address a closed session of the diplomatic
workforce. A White House official said Obama held the meeting “to express his
solidarity with our diplomats stationed around the world.” The official said
Obama wanted to “give thanks for the service and sacrifices that our civilians
make, and pay tribute to those who were lost.”
Clinton identified Smith as a Foreign Service
information management officer for 10 years who was on a temporary assignment
in Libya. She said Smith, an Air Force veteran, left a wife and two children.
The names of the other two people killed were being withheld pending
notification of their families, Clinton said.
Before appearing at the White House with Obama,
Clinton called those who attacked the Benghazi consulate a “small and savage
group,” praised the response by the Libyan government and people to the
violence and said the assault would not deter the United States from helping
Libya become free and stable.
“This is an attack that should shock the conscience of
people of all faiths around the world,” Clinton said in a solemn speech at the
State Department. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this senseless
act of violence.”
“Today many Americans are asking — indeed I asked
myself — how could this happen,” she said. “How could this happen in a country
we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question
reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding, the world can be.
But we must be clear-eyed even in our grief. This was an attack by a small and
savage group, not by the people or government of Libya.”
Clinton said Libyans had helped to repel the attackers
and lead other Americans to safety, and she said Libya’s president has pledged
to pursue those responsible.
Stressing that “a free and stable Libya” is in the
U.S. interest, Clinton said, “We will not turn our back on that. Nor will we
rest until those responsible for these attacks are found and brought to
justice.”
She said some people have sought to justify the
violence as “a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” She
added: “There is no justification for this.... Violence like this is no way to
honor religion or faith, and as long as there are those who would take innocent
life in the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.”
Both the Egyptian and Libyan governments condemned the
violence outside the American diplomatic compounds. But local security
officials in both countries appeared slow to provide protection for the
American diplomatic installations and have issued no firm statements explaining
the violence.
In a news conference in Tripoli Wednesday, Libya’s
prime minister and parliamentary speaker apologized for the assault and
extended sympathy for the deaths to the United States and families of the
victims.
While they provided no details, they offered two alternative
theories regarding the perpetrators, saying at one point that Gaddafi loyalists
were responsible but later saying that it involved “extremists” and was related
to Tuesday’s anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United
States.
The film that appeared to have sparked the protest in
Cairo is called “The Innocence of Muslims.” It calls the prophet Muhammad a
fraud and shows him having sex. A controversial Cairo television host, Sheikh
Khaled Abdallah, aired clips from the video on an Islamic-focused television
station on Saturday, and the same video clips were posted online on Monday.
A man who identified himself as Sam Bacile said he
made the film. Bacile had gone into hiding on Tuesday, but remained defiant in
his condemnations of Islam, the Associated Press reported.
Bacile described himself to several news organizations
as an Israeli-born Jew who works as a real estate developer in California. The
Washington Post included that identification, citing the AP interview. But
Steve Klein, an associate of Bacile, told the Atlantic that Bacile was in fact
a pseudonym. Bacile is not listed in any directories or incorporations or real
estate deeds and is not licensed in California as a real estate broker.
The crisis quickly spilled over into the U.S.
presidential campaign, as Mitt Romney issued a brief statement saying he was
“outraged” by the assaults. Romney then said, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama
administration’s first response was not to condemn the attacks on our
diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Obama’s reelection campaign quickly responded in kind,
saying, “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is
confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya,
Governor Romney would choose the launch of a political attack.”
Romney, speaking to reporters on the campaign trail
Wednesday, stood by his criticism.
Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1988,
when Arnold Raphel was killed in a mysterious airplane crash in Pakistan along
with Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq.
Birnbaum reported from Cairo. Sari Horwitz, Douglas
Frantz , Tara Bahrampour, Craig M. Whitlock and David A. Fahrenthold in
Washington, Edward Cody in Paris, HaithamTabei in Cairo, and Ingy Hassieb in
El-Arish, Egypt, contributed to this report.
The
Washington Post
Jacked on coffee and the Koran.
Protests enter 4th day as anger toward U.S. spreads
through Muslim world
By , Updated:
Friday, September 14, 10:02 AMThe
Washington Post
Protesters in Tunis broke into the U.S. Embassy compound and set fire to cars in the parking lot before being pushed out by police and special forces, who also confronted stone-throwing crowds with tear gas and gunfire, the Associated Press reported. Police in Khartoum, Sudan fired on protesters trying to scale the walls of the embassy there, AP said. And security forces in Sanaa, Yemen, fired guns in the air to keep protesters away from that city’s U.S. Embassy, a day after its compound was broken into and looted.
In Tripoli, Lebanon,
demonstrators set fire to a KFC restaurant and a Hardee’s, according to AP.
Security forces opened fire, killing at least one person. Twenty-five people
were injured in clashes, most of them police.
Anti-U.S. demonstrations were
also underway in Afghanistan, Bahrain, East Jerusalem, Great Britain,
Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Turkey and the West
Bank, AP reported, with many protesters chanting religious slogans and railing
against the denigration of Islam in the obscure, apparently made-in-America
film.
In Egypt — a key player in the
Arab world and longtime U.S. partner, where the overthrow of strongman Hosni
Mubarak in 2011 led to the democratic election of President Mohamed Morsi— the
challenge of maintaining a good relationship with Washington while still
addressing public outrage over the incendiary video was clearly on display.
Thousands gathered in Tahrir
Square, 350 yards from the fortress-like U.S. Embassy breached earlier this week. Security forces
constructed a massive concrete wall to block off one access road to the
embassy, witnesses said, and skirmished with demonstrators who arrived in a
slow stream after midday prayers.
The government appealed for calm,
with Morsi — who had received a stern telephone call from President Obama
Wednesday night — appearing on state television to call for restraint. State
television also repeatedly played a Thursday message from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton, in which she called the obscure, made-in-America video
“disgusting and reprehensible.”
The powerful Muslim Brotherhood
organization, with which Morsi is affiliated, sent out an English-language
tweet at 11:53 a.m. local time (5:53 a.m. in Washington) saying that it
“cancels Friday’s nationwide protests, announces it will be present only in #Tahrir,
for symbolic protest against the movie.”
But Mahmoud Hussein, the
organization’s secretary general, dispatched an Arabic-language statement less
than an hour later, at 12:12 p.m., calling for protests “in front of the
mosques of the whole country . . . to show the whole Egyptian people’s anger.”
Reflecting worry from influential
Egyptian political and clerical leaders that the tone of demonstrations had
gotten too heated, the ultraconservative Nour political party said Thursday
that Friday’s demonstrations should take place away from embassies and
condemned both violence and the video.
“We appreciate and value . . .
the statement from the American embassy that condemned the insult to Islam and
its prophets,” the party said in a statement.
In the end, the relatively low
turnout in Cairo, where few protesters in Tahrir Square identified themselves
with the Muslim Brotherhood, may have reflected a successful call for restraint
from the country’s leaders, although the crowd continued to fluctuate as night
fell on the city.
American outposts in the
Middle East are watching for new demonstrations over a movie that ridicules the
prophet Muhammad. Protests have occurred in at least 10 nations since the first
disturbances on Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
But many who turned out
illustrated the challenges that Morsi faces.
“Morsi’s stance was halfway
there,” said Roshy Kamel, 34, who had a thick beard typical of conservative
Muslims. “We need him to suspend Egyptian-American relations and expel the
American ambassador. We need him to show we are strong.”
It was impossible to know how
many of thousands of demonstrators who filled streets outside U.S. outposts
were actually motivated by reports about the movie — which was made under mysterious circumstances, apparently
by individuals in California — and how many were venting anger at the United
States for other reasons. A short clip of the film has been circulated on the
Internet for weeks, but apparently did not generate much attention until it was
subtitled in Arabic and sent to Egyptian journalists.
But the vehemence and volatile
nature of the protests in capital after capital — images of which were broadcast around the globe
almost instantly via blogs, social media networks and cable news stations — was
unmistakable.
In Khartoum, about 5,000
demonstrators gathered at the German and British embassies around midday Friday
and stormed Germany’s, setting it ablaze. Buses full of protesters then headed
for the U.S. Embassy, on the outskirts of the city, al-Jazeera said. Witnesses
told the Associated Press that thousands of Sudanese soon gathered outside the
American diplomatic facility and were trying to climb its walls when police
opened fire. At least three protesters were seen motionless on the ground,
injured or perhaps dead, the news service said.
In Sanaa, security outside the
embassy had been significantly increased after protesters broke into the
compound Thursday, smashing windows and looting offices. A new roadblock was
set up to keep protesters farther away from the embassy, and two Yemeni
security officers said they had been given orders to use live ammunition if the
protests got too close to the compound. Several prominent conservative Muslim
leaders in Yemen condemned Thursday’s embassy break-in.
Still, demonstrators on Friday
burned U.S. flags and chanted “Death to America, death to Israel,” as they had
the previous day. Security forces fired into the air, used tear gas and fired
water cannons. The protests did not appear to have grown in size since
Thursday.
In a measure of the tension
between American diplomats in Cairo and the Egyptian government, a minor
tempest broke out Thursday on Twitter between representatives of the Muslim
Brotherhood and U.S. Embassy public affairs officials.
The Brotherhood posted a message
of support for the embassy staff, saying it was “relieved” that no diplomatic
worker had been harmed in the Cairo demonstrations and expressing hope that
relations between the countries would be maintained through the “turbulence of
Tuesday’s events.”
In response, the U.S. Embassy
feed said, “Thanks. By the way, have you checked out your own Arabic feeds? I
hope you know we read those too,” an apparent reference to the calls for more
protests.
“We understand you’re under a lot
of stress,” the Brotherhood replied. “But it will be more helpful if you point
out exactly the Arabic feed of concern.”
American outposts in the
Middle East are watching for new demonstrations over a movie that ridicules the
prophet Muhammad. Protests have occurred in at least 10 nations since the first
disturbances on Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
The start of the protests, on
Tuesday, coincided with an attack by
militants on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the death
of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. diplomatic
personnel.
Although analysts believe the
attack was premeditated, and not directly linked to anger over the anti-Muslim
video, the bloodshed added to the urgency in recent days as the Obama
administration tried to restore calm.
“The U.S. government had
absolutely nothing to do with this video,” Clinton said at a meeting in
Washington on Thursday with a delegation from Morocco. “We absolutely reject
its content and messages. But there is no justification — none at all — for
responding to this video with violence.”
The message went out from
Washington throughout the day, in White House briefings, in speeches in Arab
capitals and through official Web sites, e-mails and Twitter feeds from the
State Department and its embassies around the globe.
In Pakistan, where anti-American
demonstrations are frequent, the government said it had “banned” the
American-made video and blocked access to it online. Although Afghanistan
reportedly did the same, “Innocence of Muslims” was easily available there on
the Internet on Thursday night.
Google, which owns YouTube, said
it had acted on its own to stop access to the video in Egypt and Libya. A
Google official said the company was “watching carefully” events in other
countries.
National Security Council
spokesman Tommy Vietor said the White House did not ask Google or YouTube to remove the
video. “We reached out to YouTube to call the video to their attention
and asked them to review whether it violates their terms of use,” he said.
The administration has criticized
other governments for trying to shut down the Internet, bar certain content or
jam cellphone and other communications it finds displeasing. It also has
assisted dissidents in countries such as Syria in making their voices heard
electronically. And it has struggled to develop its own ability to promote U.S.
messages through social media. In separate programs, the State Department and
the Pentagon have spent tens of millions of dollars to monitor the public
communications of others and send out their own.
Wilgoren reported from
Washington. Karen DeYoung, Greg Miller and David Nakamura in Washington,
Richard Leiby in Kabul and Mohammad al-Qadhi in Sanaa contributed to this
report.
The Washington Post
Libya Attack Brings
Challenges for U.S.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: September 12, 2012 2155 Comments
CAIRO — Islamist militants armed with antiaircraft weapons
and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a lightly defended United States
diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, late Tuesday,
killing the American ambassador and three members of his staff and raising
questions about the radicalization of countries swept up in the Arab Spring.
The ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens,
was missing almost immediately after the start of an intense, four-hour
firefight for control of the mission, and his body was not located until
Wednesday morning at dawn, when he was found dead at a Benghazi hospital,
American and Libyan officials said. It was the first time since 1979 that an
American ambassador had died in a violent assault.
American and European officials said that while many details
about the attack remained unclear, the assailants seemed organized, well
trained and heavily armed, and they appeared to have at least some level of advance
planning. But the officials cautioned that it was too soon to tell whether the
attack was related to the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Fighters involved in the assault, which was spearheaded by a
Islamist brigade formed during last year’s uprising against Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi, said in interviews during the battle that they were moved to attack
the mission by anger over a 14-minute, American-made video that depicted the
Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as a villainous, homosexual and child-molesting
buffoon. Their attack followed by just a few hours the storming of the compound
surrounding the United States Embassy in Cairo by an unarmed mob protesting the
same video. On Wednesday, new crowds of protesters gathered outside the United
States Embassies in Tunis and Cairo.
The wave of unrest set off by the video, posted online in
the United States two months ago and dubbed into Arabic for the first time
eight days ago, has further underscored the instability of the countries that
cast off their longtime dictators in the Arab Spring revolts. It also cast
doubt on the adequacy of security preparations at American diplomatic outposts
in the volatile region.
Benghazi, awash in guns, has recently witnessed a string of
assassinations as well as attacks on international missions, including a bomb
said to be planted by another Islamist group that exploded near the United
States mission there as recently as June. But a Libyan politician who had
breakfast with Mr. Stevens at the mission the morning before he was killed
described security, mainly four video cameras and as few as four Libyan guards,
as sorely inadequate for an American ambassador in such a tumultuous
environment. “This country is still in transition, and everybody knows the
extremists are out there,” said Fathi Baja, the Libyan politician.
Obama Vows Justice
President Obama condemned the killings, promised to bring
the assailants to justice and ordered tighter security at all American
diplomatic installations. The administration also sent 50 Marines to the Libyan
capital, Tripoli, to help with security at the American Embassy there, ordered
all nonemergency personnel to leave Libya and warned Americans not to travel
there. A senior defense official said that the Pentagon sent two warships
toward the Libyan coast as a precaution.
“These four Americans stood up for freedom and human
dignity,” Mr. Obama said in a televised statement from the White House Rose
Garden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Make no mistake, we
will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who
attacked our people.”
In Tripoli, Libyan leaders also vowed to track down the
attackers and stressed their unity with Washington.
Yussef Magariaf, president of the newly elected Libyan
National Congress, offered “an apology to the United States and the Arab
people, if not the whole world, for what happened.” He pledged new measures to
ensure the security of foreign diplomats and companies. “We together with the
United States government are on the same side, standing in a united front in
the face of these murderous outlaws.”
Obama administration officials and regional officials
scrambled to sort out conflicting reports about the attack and the motivation
of the attackers. A senior Obama administration officials told reporters during
a conference call that “it was clearly a complex attack,” but offered no
details.
Col. Wolfgang Pusztai, who until early August was Austria’s
defense attaché to Libya and visited the country every month, said in an e-mail
that he believed the attack was “deliberately planned and executed” by about a
core group of 30 to 40 assailants who were “well trained and organized.” But he
said the reports from some terrorism experts that the attack may be linked to
the recent death in drone strikes of senior Qaeda leaders, including Abu Yahya
al-Libi, were unsupported.
A translated version of the video that set off the uprising
arrived first in Egypt before reaching the rest of the Islamic world. Its
author, whose identity is now a mystery, devoted the video’s prologue to
caricatured depictions of Egyptian Muslims abusing Egyptian Coptic Christians
while Egyptian police officers stood by. It was publicized last week by an
American Coptic Christian activist, Morris Sadek, well known here for his
scathing attacks on Islam.
Mr. Sadek promoted the video in tandem with a declaration by
Terry Jones — a Florida pastor best known for burning the Koran and promoting
what he called “International Judge Muhammad Day” on Sept. 11.
The video began attracting attention in the Egyptian news
media, including the broadcast of offensive scenes on Egyptian television last
week. At that point, American diplomats in Cairo informed the State Department
of the festering outrage in the days before the Sept. 11 anniversary, said a
person briefed on their concerns. But officials in Washington declined to
address or disavow the video, this person said.
By late afternoon Tuesday, hundreds had gathered in mostly
peaceful protest outside the United States Embassy here, overseen by a large
contingent of Egyptian security forces. But around 6 p.m., after the end of the
workday and television news coverage of the event, the crowd began to swell,
including a group of rowdy young soccer fans.
Gaining Entrance
Then, around 6:30 p.m., a small group of protesters — one
official briefed on the events put it around 20 — brought a ladder to the wall
of the compound and quickly scaled it, gaining entrance to the ground. Embassy
officials asked the Egyptian government to remove the infiltrators without
using weapons or force, to avoid inflaming the situation, this official said.
(An embassy official said that contrary to reports on Tuesday, no one fired
weapons in the air.) But it took the Egyptian security officers five hours to
remove the intruders, leaving them ample time to run around the grounds, deface
American flags, and hoist the black flag favored by Islamic ultraconservatives
and labeled with Islam’s most basic expression of faith, “There is no god but
God, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
It is unclear if television images of Islamist protesters
may have inspired the attack in Benghazi, which had been a hotbed of opposition
to Colonel Qaddafi and remains unruly since the Libyan uprising resulted in his
death. But Tuesday night, a group of armed assailants mixed with unarmed
demonstrators gathered at the small compound that housed a temporary American
diplomatic mission there.
The ambassador, Mr. Stevens, was visiting the city Tuesday
from the United States Embassy compound in Tripoli to attend the planned
opening of an American cultural center, and was staying at the mission. It is
not clear if the assailants knew that the ambassador was at the mission.
Interviewed at the scene on Tuesday night, many attackers
and those who backed them said they were determined to defend their faith from
the video’s insults. Some recalled an earlier episode when protesters in
Benghazi had burned down the Italian consulate after an Italian minister had
worn a T-shirt emblazoned with cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. Ten
people were reportedly killed in clashes with Colonel Qaddafi’s police force.
That assault was led by a brigade of Islamist fighters known
as Ansar al-Sharia, or the Supporters of Islamic Law. Brigade members
emphasized at the time that they were not acting alone. On Wednesday, perhaps
apprehensive over Mr. Stevens’s death, the brigade said in a statement that its
supporters “were not officially involved or were not ordered to be involved” in
the attack.
At the same time, the brigade praised those who protested as
“the best of the best” of the Libyan people and supported their response to the
video “in the strongest possible terms.”
Conflicting Accounts
There were conflicting accounts of how Mr. Stevens had died.
One witness to the mayhem around the compound on Tuesday said militants chased
him to a safe house and lobbed grenades at the location, where he was later
found unconscious, apparently from smoke inhalation, and could not be revived
by rescuers who took him to a hospital.
An unidentified Libyan official in Benghazi told Reuters
that Mr. Stevens and three staff members were killed in Benghazi “when gunmen
fired rockets at them.” The Libyan official said the ambassador was being
driven from the mission building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire,
Reuters said.
Five American ambassadors had been killed by terrorists
before Tuesday’s attack, according to the State Department. The most recent was
Adolph Dubs, killed after being kidnapped in Afghanistan in 1979. The others
were John Gordon Mein, in Guatemala in 1968; Cleo A. Noel Jr., in Sudan in
1973; Rodger P. Davies, in Cyprus in 1974; and Francis E. Meloy Jr., in Lebanon
in 1976.
Witnesses and State Department officials said that the
attack began almost immediately after the protesters and the brigade arrived
around 10 p.m. Witnesses said the brigade started the attack by firing a
rocket-propelled grenade at the gate of the mission’s main building. American
officials said that by 10:15 the attackers had gained entrance to the main
building.
A second wave of assailants arrived soon after and swarmed
into the compound, witnesses said.
“They expected that there would be more American commandos
in there. They went in with guns blazing, with R.P.G.’s,” said Mohamed Ali, a
relative of the landlord who rents the building to the American mission and who
watched the battle.
Libya’s deputy interior minister, Wanis al-Sharif, made
somewhat contradictory and defensive-sounding statements about the attack.
He acknowledged that he had ordered the withdrawal of
security forces from the scene in the early stages of the protest on Wednesday
night. He said his initial instinct was to avoid inflaming the situation by
risking a confrontation with people angry about the video.
He also said he had underestimated the aggression of the
protesters. But he criticized the small number of guards inside the mission for
shooting back in self-defense, saying their response probably further provoked
the attackers.
The small number of Libyans guarding the facility, estimated
at only six, did not hold out long against the attackers, who had substantial
firepower, the interior minister and State Department officials said. Defending
the facility would have been a “suicide mission,” Mr. Sharif said.
Mr. Sharif also faulted the Americans at the mission for
failing to heed what he said was the Libyan government’s advice to pull its
personnel or beef up its security, especially in light of the recent violence
in the city and the likelihood that the video would provoke protests. “What is
weird is that they refrained from this procedure, depending instead on the
simple protection that they had,” he said. “What happened later is beyond our
control, and they are responsible for part of what happened.”
When the attack began, only Mr. Stevens, an aide named Sean
Smith and a State Department security officer were inside the main building. As
the building filled with smoke, security officers recovered Mr. Smith’s body
but were driven out again by the firefight, senior administration officials
said. Mr. Stevens, however, could not be found and was lost for the rest of the
night.
It took another hour — until 11:20 — before American and
Libyan forces recaptured the main building and evacuated the entire staff to an
annex nearly a mile away. The militants followed and the fighting continued
there until 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, when Libyan security reinforcements arrived
and managed to gain control of both compounds.
A freelance photographer took pictures of Libyans apparently
carrying Mr. Stevens’s ash-covered body out of the scene that were distributed
worldwide by Agence France-Presse. A doctor who treated him at the Benghazi
hospital told The Associated Press that Libyans had brought him in but were
unaware of his identity. The doctor said that he tried for 90 minutes to revive
Mr. Stevens but that he died of asphyxiation, The A.P. reported.
A senior administration official said it was not clear how
or when Mr. Stevens was taken to the hospital — or by whom. “We frankly don’t
know how he got from where Americans last saw him,” the official said.
On Wednesday night, residents of both Tripoli and Benghazi
staged demonstrations to condemn the attack and express their sorrow at the
loss of Mr. Stevens. Stationed in Benghazi during the uprising against Colonel
Qaddafi, Mr. Stevens, who was fluent in Arabic and French, had become a local
hero for his support to the Libyan rebels during their time of greatest need.
Benghazi residents circulated photographs online of Mr. Stevens frequenting
local restaurants, relishing local dishes, and strolling city streets,
apparently without a security detail.
On Wednesday, some friends of Mr. Stevens suggested that his
faith in his bond with the people of Benghazi may have blinded him to the
dangers there. “Everybody liked him,” said Mr. Baja, who ate breakfast with Mr.
Stevens on Tuesday. “He is a good man, a friendly man, he knows lots of the
sheiks in town and a lot of the intellectuals have spent some good times with
him.”
“The people in Benghazi, I think, are very sad right now.”
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Steven Lee
Myers from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Osama Alfitory and Suliman
Ali Zway from Benghazi, Libya; Mai Ayyad from Cairo; Eric Schmitt and Scott
Shane from Washington; and Alan Cowell from London.
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: September 12, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated Mohammed
Magarief’s position. He is the president of Libya’s National Assembly, not
Libya’s interim president.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 13, 2012, on page
A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Attack On U.S. Site in Libya
Kills Envoy; A Flash Point for Obama and Romney.
So how do I write a closing for this article? I suppose I'd just like to tell our Middle Eastern friends, "don't go away mad - just go". I'm Felicity and thanks for being with the Noodleman Group.
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