It all started with the assault on the Benghazi diplomatic mission in 2012. The attack was a complete surprise; the intelligence community didn’t detect the threat. Military commanders tried to lay the blame on then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was unbecoming of the US officers and quite shameful.
The Libyan uprising against Ghaddafi was a complete upheaval. Everyone in the country wanted him gone. There was no reason to believe a threat existed to the UN backed interim government or the US mission. No terrorist organization claimed responsibility for the attack. This is out of character; organization claim attacks to become popular, gain membership and donations.
In 2014 Ahmed Abu Khattala was arrested for leading the attack. He was brought to the US and tried. In 2018 he was sentenced to 22 years. Khattala has no known terrorist ties. He started a small militia during the uprising against Gaddafi.
In 2019 General Khalifa Haftar of Libya (Wikipedia) attempted to take over Tripoli and evict the UN backed Libya interim government. Haftar was also allegedly aided by everyone’s favorite contractor Erik Prince<<<. Prince is currently under investigation by the UN and the FBI for his involvement (Reuters). Also supplying support for Haftar was Russian security company Wagner Group.
It has since been revealed that Vlad Putin <<< was promised a naval and an air base in Libya if Haftar were to end up running the country.
The reason US intelligence didn’t pick up chatter prior to the Benghazi assault? It was a professional state organized attack, using bush league militia men to do the dirty work. The intent was to get the US out of LIbya. The hope was US public opinion would force the government to abandon the embassy and leave the nation open to Haftar and Putin.
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