Military-style tactics seen in US Consulate siege

Associated Press/Mohammad Hannon - Libyan followers of Ansar al-Shariah Brigades and other Islamic militias, hold a demonstration against a film and a cartoon denigrating the Prophet Muhammad in Benghazi, Libya, Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. The attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has sparked a backlash among frustrated Libyans against the heavily armed gunmen, including Islamic extremists, who run rampant in their cities. more than 10,000 people poured into a main boulevard of Benghazi, demanding that militias disband as the public tries to do what Libya's weak central government has been unable to.(AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The heavily armed extremists who laid siege to the U.S. Consulate in Libyaused military-style tactics that may have steered Americans toward a waiting ambush, U.S. officials said Friday as they pieced together details about how the compound was overrun.

U.S. intelligence indicates that 50 or more people, many of them masked, were responsible for the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Gun trucks provided added firepower. The attackers set up a perimeter, controlling access in and out of the compound. A first wave of attacks sent the Americans fleeing to a fallback building, where a second group of extremists beset them with precise mortar fire.

Intelligence reports were still coming in, but officials told The Associated Press that what may have initially seemed like a protest over an anti-Islam movie that had spun out of control now showed the hallmarks of a more sophisticated operation.

In a country coming off a civil war, a level of battlefield savvy does not prove the attack on the compound was planned well in advance. How much planning went into the operation and whether it could have been detected or prevented remain unanswered questions, officials said.

The attacks killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, who U.S. officials said were security officers guarding diplomatic officials. Stevens was visiting Benghazi from Tripoli to preside over the opening of an "American Space" cultural center.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss intelligence reports. They stressed that even now authorities do not have a clear understanding of exactly what happened in Benghazi. FBI agents from New York and Washington were in Libya investigating the attack.

"What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. "And we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorists who murdered four Americans."

Officials have not singled out one responsible group, but have focused their attention on Ansar al-Shariah, a Libyan militant group led by a former detainee at the U.S. military-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Since the civil war that ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi last year, the country has been awash with rebels, militias and terrorists. Weaponry is easy to come by, both from the former regime, from weapons depots looted during the war, and from foreign powers that armed the rebellion. The origin of the weapons used in the assault on the U.S. compound was unclear, officials said.

Whether the attack was premeditated carries both political and intelligence significance.

From an intelligence standpoint, the longer an operation was in the works ahead of the attack, the more the U.S. government will face scrutiny for not anticipating and preparing for it.

Politically, Republicans have accused President Barack Obama's administration of misreading the assault as an outgrowth of Middle East demonstrations over an American-made Internet video insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. They have also criticized the protection of the consulate, particularly since the attack fell on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a date when authorities are normally on alert for attacks.

White House spokesman Jay Carney has said there was no evidence the attack was premeditated. Obama has said extremists used the protests as an excuse to attack.

A spontaneous protest that turns violent is harder to predict and respond to.

"The intelligence agencies are still not confident enough to represent to us whether it was planned in advance or taking the opportunity of a spontaneous protest," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Friday.

Investigators say some of the people involved have a "hodgepodge of affiliations with multiple militant groups," making it hard to hold one particular militia or movement responsible, said a senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to be quoted publicly describing the investigation.

Wanis al-Sharef, who was Libya's deputy interior minister until he was fired after the attacks, said a small group of lightly armed gunmen were the first to gather outside the compound. They were then joined by a crowd of civilians protesting the film. Finally, a larger group of heavily armed men arrived with gun vehicles and grenade launchers. That final group was responsible for the siege.

Ansar al-Shariah has repeatedly denied being any part of the attack, but eyewitnesses and security officials said the group's militiamen were among the gunmen who joined the demonstration outside the compound. The group claimed its fighters were only in the Benghazi area providing security at Jalaa Hospital. But that's more than three miles from the U.S. compound, which lies on the outskirts of the city in a rural area.

One witness said he was detained by Ansar al-Shariah members during the protest because he was taking pictures of one of their leaders.

Whoever they were, the attackers stormed the main building and set it on fire. One U.S. official described the militants striking the front of the building first, distracting security, while a second group struck then from the rear. Many people escaped and fled to an annex to the east.

About an hour after the assault began, American and Libyan forces retook control of the compound and brought everyone to the annex. Rescue teams headed their way.

Intelligence indicates the gunmen broke off into teams to block certain roads away from the compound, officials said. Whether that changed the route or otherwise influenced how the Americans moved through the streets remains unclear, but one U.S. official said the tactic was being looked at as an indication of battlefield strategy and sophistication.

As the Americans waited to be rescued from the annex, that building came under mortar fire. Mortars are short-range bombs that launch in high arcs. Aiming them can be a matter of trial and error. But U.S. officials said mortars were landing directly on the roof of the annex.

That, officials said, indicated an experienced fighter, a well-planned assault or both.

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Massacre of preachers in Mali sign of broken army

Associated Press/Rukmini Callimachi - In this Monday, Sept. 17, 2012 photo, children play on the roadside near a canal where two survivors of a Sept. 8 military-led massacre were witnessed being captured by soldiers later that same night, in Kourouma, Mali. Local resident Souma Diallo saw soldiers capturing an unidentified elderly man with a beard and Moctar Bechir, a minibus driver he recognized. The whereabouts of both men remain unknown. On Sept. 8 in the central Malian village of Diabaly, 1.2 miles (2 kms) from Kourouma, Malian soldiers stopped a minibus in which at least 17 Muslim preachers were traveling to a religious conference in Bamako. Within 1½ hours of the car arriving at the checkpoint, 16 of the 17 men were dead.(AP Photo/Rukmini Callimachi)

In this Monday, Sept. 17, 2012 photo, children play on the roadside near a canal where two survivors of a Sept. 8 military-led massacre were witnessed being captured by soldiers later that same night, in Kourouma, Mali. Local resident Souma Diallo saw soldiers capturing an unidentified elderly man with a beard and Moctar Bechir, a minibus driver he recognized. The whereabouts of both men remain unknown. On Sept. 8 in the central Malian village of Diabaly, 1.2 miles (2 kms) from Kourouma, Malian soldiers stopped a minibus in which at least 17 Muslim preachers were traveling to a religious conference in Bamako. Within 1½ hours of the car arriving at the checkpoint, 16 of the 17 men were dead.(AP Photo/Rukmini Callimachi)

In this Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012 photo, Maouloud Ould Sidi Mohamed, the sole known survivor of a military-led massacre in central Mali, shows the gashes on his feet, sustained as he hid in the forest for five days, at the Mauritanian Embassy in Bamako, Mali. On the night of Sept. 8, Malian soldiers opened fire on the car in which at least 17 Muslim preachers, nine of whom, including Mohamed, were from neighboring Mauritania, were traveling to a religious conference in Bamako. Within 1½ hours of the car being stopped by soldiers, 16 of the 17 men were dead. Mohamed managed to hide between the cadavers in the bed of the truck, and then to escape, losing his shoes as he fled. He was eventually recaptured by Malian soldiers and held for a week before being released to the Mauritanian embassy for repatriation following intense diplomatic pressure. (AP Photo/Rukmini Callimachi)

DIABALY, Mali (AP) — It was dusk when the aging Toyota pickup truck pulled into the first military checkpoint, loaded with at least 17 bearded men fingering prayer beads.

This pinprick of a village in central Mali is not even large enough to appear on most administrative maps. Cars pass through here so rarely that donkeys fall asleep in the center of the highway.

The preachers were coming from Mauritania and had paperwork showing they were on their way to a religious conference in Mali's capital, 270 miles (430 kilometers) away. None of them was armed.

Soldiers arrested them and brought them to a military camp. There they opened fire on the stationary truck, spraying it with their machine guns. Then they dragged out the corpses, buried them in a mass grave and launched a manhunt for those who had escaped.

Within 1½ hours of the car arriving at the checkpoint, 16 of the 17 men were dead.

The AP has found that rank-and-file soldiers carried out the massacre of their own accord, ignoring not only the normal rules of engagement but also their own command structure. Their actions show just how much the military of this once-stable nation has broken down since a coup six months ago, with officers no longer able to control their troops.

These concerns about Mali's military come at a time when the world is considering sending arms, equipment and troops to help it take back the north, which has fallen to Islamic extremists. Just this week, the United Nations Security Council instructed Mali's neighbors to submit a detailed plan for military intervention, which the U.N. would support.

"It's as if Mali has fallen into a coma," said analyst Gilles Yabi, the West Africa director for the International Crisis Group and author of a recent report on this troubled country. "The reality on the ground is that it's the rank-and-file soldiers that are now in power. ... And it's in this context that you can explain such a grave blunder as what we saw happen in Diabaly."

Mali is a country of 15.8 million people that is turning into an ungoverned vaccuum, a source of increasing worry for the rest of the world. It's been exactly six months since junior officers overthrew the democratically elected government on March 22. In the wake of the coup, rebels allied with al-Qaida seized control of the north, creating a new haven for extreme Islam.

It was into this turmoil that the group of preachers stumbled, at around 7 p.m. on the night of Sept. 8. The AP has pieced their story together through interviews with the one known survivor, two police officers present at the time of the attack and their superior, diplomats, villagers, and family members in Mauritania, who prepared their bullet-riddled bodies for burial.

The Toyota minibus with plate No. 0148AN00 RIM rolled in just as dark was enveloping the bridge at Dogofri, nine miles (15 kilometers) north of Diabaly. Anyone in these parts would have recognized the letters RIM as standing for Republique Islamique de la Mauritanie, or Mauritania, Mali's more religious neighbor to the north.

The preachers included at least nine Mauritanians and seven Malians, ranging in age from 25 to 54. They belonged to the Dawa Tablighi, a fundementalist but non-violent current of Islam.

The Mali military had been instructed to monitor members of the sect, especially those trying to enter from neighboring countries, according to an internal memo dated Sept. 5, seen by Amnesty International.

"In view of the situation in the north of the country," the memo from the Department of Home and Security said, "It seems appropriate to consider steps to better marshal this association, particularly with regard to foreign participants, in order to limit their entry into the national territory."

The preachers met up in Fassala, a town at the Mauritanian border.

Two of them had tried to come to Mali in July but had been turned back. So to make sure they wouldn't have any problems, they hired Moctar Bechir, a Malian truck driver who frequently transports merchandise from Mauritania to Mali.

On Sept. 8, the truck had already been rented by a wholesaler transporting about a ton of beans. The preachers sat squished together in the cab and on top of the sacks of beans, said 51-year-old Maouloud Ould Sidi Mohamed, the sole confirmed survivor of the massacre, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press.

The preachers were stopped at the entrance to Dogofri, where police checked their identity cards and asked questions. The paramilitary police, or gendarmes, wrote down the list of names in a register, a copy of which the AP saw.

They were stopped again at the bridge, this time by the military. That's when the trouble started.

"There was a young man with us, Amane. He has a really nice beard," said Mohamed. "When they saw him, they got suspicious."

They sent the men inside and searched the car. All they found, Mohamed said, was a couple of pots.

Then they started to interrogate the preachers, one by one. They opened one man's bag, and found clothes and a bar of soap. Then they put the men back in the Toyota and drove them to Diabaly, in a caravan between two pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

When they saw what the soldiers were doing, the gendarmes radioed their commander. He instructed them to send one police officer to follow the convoy on his scooter. All the gendarmes who spoke to the AP requested anonymity out of fear for their safety.

It takes less than 20 minutes to drive from Dogofri to Diabaly, a nine-mile-long dirt road of red earth beaten down by the tires of lorries. The road is lined by rice paddies on the left and a tributary of theNiger River on the right.

On that evening, like on every other, women bathed in the river topless and laid their laundry to dry out on the rocky ground. Just about the loudest sound on any normal night is the high-pitched braying of a donkey.

When the caravan arrived at the camp, the gendarme and the soldiers in the two accompanying cars went into the commander's office. Just 15 minutes later, the shooting erupted.

The gendarme ran back out and saw bodies lying on the ground. He called his superior to say the soldiers were killing the preachers. The senior officer confirmed to the AP that he received the call between 8 and 9 p.m.

"It's due to the indiscipline inside the army," said the senior officer. "The night that this happened, everyone knows which soldiers were on duty. They decided themselves, without being given an order, and without consulting with their higher-ups to do this."

The survivor, Mohamed, said the men in the truck could hear the soldiers discussing what to do with them.

"I don't think my friends could have imagined what was about to happen," said Mohamed. "But I knew. I know this country. And I understood that it was over for us."

When the shooting suddenly started, Mohamed saw people falling around him. He himself fell and hid between the cadavers in the bed of the truck.

A few moments later, he saw two people try to run. He followed them out of the car, crawling between the wheels of the lorry.

He reached a small wall. While climbing it, he lost his shoe. So he left the other one behind, ran barefoot across the rice paddies and jumped into a canal. His robe hung heavy with water, so he took it off. He swam in his underwear and undershirt.

On the other side, he hid by some trees. He says he saw the light from the torches of the soldiers looking for him.

He hid for five days. On the night of Sept. 13, they found him and took him back to the camp.

Mohamed was held by the military incommunicado for a week. He was transfered from Diabaly to a garrison in the capital, Bamako, where he was kept under constant watch. He was too afraid to even speak with an envoy from the Mauritanian embassy.

He was released this Thursday after immense diplomatic pressure, and spoke to the AP inside the Mauritanian embassy in the minutes before he was whisked off to the airport. Both Malian and Mauritanian officials confirmed his identity. The soles of his feet were pockmarked by gashes after five days of walking without shoes.

If you follow the red dirt highway another 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) south, you reach the village of Kourouma. Souma Diallo, a 40-year-old machine operator, was getting ready to go to sleep at around midnight on Sept. 8 when he heard people shouting.

He stepped out and saw the soldiers had caught an old man with a long beard. His hands were tied with his own turban. The man's whereabouts remain unknown.

Diallo also saw a young man who was bleeding from his head. It was the truck driver, Moctar Bechir — whom Diallo recognized because both have extended family in nearby Niono. Diallo told the soldiers he knew the young man, handed over his phone and asked the driver to call people who could confirm his identity.

A few days later, on Sept. 12, the soldiers returned to Diallo's home and arrested him, he said. They accused him of complicity "with the rebels."

They brought him to the camp and started screaming at him. The soldiers had blood-shot eyes, like they were drugged, he said. When they briefly left him alone, Diallo bolted, crawled through a hole in a wall and ran for his life.

Behind the kitchen, he came face-to-face with the driver, Bechir. He was tied to a bench with a rope around his waist. They said nothing to each other.

Diallo spoke to the AP from his hiding place in a different part of Mali on the condition that his whereabouts not be disclosed.

In the days after the shooting, nine bodies with multiple bullet wounds were repatriated to Mauritania. Seven were buried in a municipal cemetery in Bamako. Mali issued a government communique expressing deep condolences, but stopping short of taking responsibility for the deaths.

Col. Idrissa Traore, director of public relations for the Malian military, acknowledged that the troops at Diabaly had violated the command structure. But he noted that the preachers came from the former sect of Iyad Ag Ghali, the head of one extremist group now controlling Mali's north.

Traore said the military had kept Mohamed for a week because he was "in a bad psychological state," and they wanted to question him.

"An investigation is in process to determine all of this. And once we are done, we will make a declaration," he said.

Representatives of the families of the dead have met with the minister of defense. He denied knowing anything about the driver.

Hassane Bechir, the 44-year-old brother of the driver, now spends his days waiting inside a room in Bamako. He smokes cigarettes, his dull eyes watching the passing images on a television a few feet away.

"So long as I don't have proof that he is dead, then to me, he is alive," said the missing man's older brother. "They haven't given me a body. At the very least, give me his body."

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Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed contributed to this report.

9/11 Doubts Seep into the Mainstream as Evidence Accumulates

The most significant expert may turn out to be Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, the widely respected honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court and legendary mafia hunter who lost his brother in a revenge attack.

Courtesy: liamscheff.com

(LONDON) - As the annual 9/11 remembrance draws to a close, the world is as split as ever. Not only on whether the Afghan and Iraq invasions were justified, but between those who accept Washington's official 9/11 story and those who do not.

Under the mainstream media radar, the number of those who do not is steadily increasing, forming substantial majorities in places like Pakistan and Egypt and significant minorities even in NATO's heartland countries, France, the UK and the US itself. The issue is not whether, despite his denials, Osama Bin Laden might have wanted to organise the 9/11 attacks but whether Al Qaeda actually had the capability to infiltrate 19 terrorists into the US, including some very well known to the CIA, and the four highly skilled pilots necessary to pull off the spectacular coup. Up to then Al Qaeda's biggest success was setting off two truck bombs in East Africa. (1)

The stereotype promoted by the corporate media of a 9/11 sceptic, a badly educated redneck watching Fox News in a trailer park, could hardly be further from the truth. The website Patriot's Question 9/11 lists hundreds of University Professors, over a thousand architects and engineers and hundreds of aviation professionals who have spoken out against the official 9/11 story. (8)

The most significant expert may turn out to be Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, the widely respected honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court and legendary mafia hunter who lost his brother in a revenge attack. Imposimato has written to the Journal of 9/11 Studies announcing his intention to bring a case before the International Criminal Court citing key figures in the US administration for involvement in the execution of the 9/11 attacks. (2)

Imposimato's take has received indirect support from people close to the heart of Washington's power elite. Richard Clarke, White House anti-terror czar at the time, has confirmed what researcher Kevin Fenton has established based on a meticulous examination of recently released official reports. Someone at the top of the CIA "made a decision" to stand down the FBI and the CIA, allowing the alleged hijackers a free run in the US when they would otherwise have been arrested and the plot foiled. (9)

Meanwhile the 9/11 truth movement continues with a drip, drip of new research. This year we have seen nothing on the scale of the revelations of iron spheres and uncombusted nanothermite in the dust at Ground Zero, strong indicators that the Twin Towers' spectacular collapses on live TV were caused by something a lot hotter than diesel fuel fires. But there are significant developments nonetheless.

Scientist Kevin Ryan was fired from work some time ago after he went public saying his employer Underwriters Laboratories, the company which had certified the quality of the steel used in the World Trade Centre, was involved in creating fake computer simulations to help support the official story that the fires were sufficiently hot to cause the disastrous collapse of three skyscrapers. He has since been beavering away at various aspects of the 9/11 story.

This year Ryan has released an analysis of the changes that the 9/11 events have brought to the US building industry. If the official story is to be believed, 9/11 was an architectural and engineering disaster. Buildings expressly designed to withstand a high speed jet impact and subsequent fire failed spectacularly. This disaster should have led to an urgent and exhaustive inquiry with many action points for other buildings of the same construction. Instead, says Ryan, nothing like that happened.The US engineering community has acted as though it does not believe the official 9/11 story any more than the alleged conspiracy theorists in their trailer parks. (3)

Meanwhile the US Public Broadcasting System became the conduit for the latest film from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth: Explosive Evidence - The Experts Speak Out, with downloads nationally pushing Bill Clinton's Convention Speech into third place, an astonishing success for a topic the mainstream media as usual were entirely deaf to (4). The film has a section in which psychologists and counsellors explain why the media and sections of the public are so reluctant to doubt an official story that might, from another government, seem highly unlikely if not absurd. The reasons come down to trauma, belief in authority and a phenomenon psychologists call cognitive dissonance. For every trailer park dissident there are several other citizens with a very strong desire to believe in authority, especially after the terrifying circumstances and unprecedented media barrage of 9/11. Confronted with contradictory evidence some time later, such people suffer from painful cognitive dissonance and often resort to denial.

An example of cognitive dissonance occurred last week on CNN when Piers Morgan tried to dismiss Jesse Ventura, a maverick politician and broadcaster. Morgan clearly knew little about the issue and could only say the suggestion of an inside job was "preposterous". The studio audience applauded Ventura. (10)

Another 9/11 researcher who goes by the name of Shoestring has presented a very detailed analysis of the various emergency offices that failed on the morning of 9/11. Probably the most shocking was the FBI's emergency management office in Washington, designed to cope with up to five major emergencies at one time, which knew nothing more than the TV channels. In the light of so much other bizarre activity - at the CIA, on the building investigation, the failure of Washington's Andrews Airbase to scramble any of its fighters for nearly two hours - the official 9/11 story of coincidence, surprise and cock-up begins to look less likely than some of the alternatives. (5)

But surely the post 9/11 war against Al Qaeda has produced a network of detainees, led by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who have corroborated the official 9/11 story of a plot hatched in the caves of Afghanistan? Even the supine 911 Commission was disturbed by the CIA's refusal to allow them any contact with KSM or even his interrogators. As suspicions of systematic torture were confirmed in media leaks, the CIA illegally destroyed most of its own records, presumably to save its officers the worry of future prosecution. This ugly picture of detainees tortured into corroborating the official 9/11 story has been enhanced by another recent revelation from the Defence Department Inspector General: detainees were given truth drugs, or to put it in official language were drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that “could impair an individual’s ability to provide accurate information". (6)

Last year's bombshell from the White House anti-terror czar at the time has produced a sequel. Richard Clarke has focused on the role of the CIA saying the then boss George Tenet must have known about the shocking unexplained decision to block three FBI field offices from acting against several 9/11 hijackers. Most researchers agree that the CIA's dedicated Osama Bin Laden Unit, kept secret until some years after 9/11, is the best place to start asking questions. Up to now they have focused on Bush favorite and torture advocate Cofer Black who oversaw the unit before moving on to make money as a principal in Blackwater, the mercenary company in Iraq.

Recently another CIA official has come into the frame: Black's deputy in the CIA's counter terror center, Enrique “Ricky” Prado. A book based on sources in the Miami Vice Squad describes Prado's apparent double life as CIA official and a member of Florida's Cuban mafia. The story was ignored by much of the mainstream media but carried in detail in Wired magazine, the Daily Beast and the UK's Daily Mail, which operates under stringent libel laws. (7)

When will the truth be known? Many agree that the planet's intelligence services probably already know. Iran's President Ahmedinajad's UN General Assembly speech calling for a new investigation into 9/11 was greeted with predictable outrage and the corporate media applauded when the NATO countries angrily walked out. But most countries did not walk out and with global opinion ever more sceptical as time goes by, this could prove a bad omen for Washington.

(1) In the UK a poll by ICM taken last year showed only seven percent were fully confident they had been told the whole story of the attacks, while in France a large minority thought the US government was involved in the attacks. Middle East experts as diverse as Alan Hart and Mohamed Heykal have both said that any Al Qaeda plot would have immediately been known to the many intelligence services who had agents in the ramshackle setup.

(2) http://www.journalof911studies.com/

(3) http://digwithin.net/2012/09/07/are-tall-buildings-safer/. Note: the media have featured someone claiming to be from the original engineers team who has said that planners never imagined a plane crash into the WTC but this is contradicted by the written record and there is scant evidence that this individual was in the role he claims.

(4) digitaljournal.com/article/332051

(5) http://shoestring911.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/why-were-us-intelligence-facilities-in.html

(6) http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/u-s-drugged-detainees-to-obtain-false-confessions.html

(7) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/28/did-a-cia-agent-work-for-the-mob-excerpt-from-evan-wright-s-new-book.html

(8) For an interesting review of some of the questions raised see

http://www.WantToKnow.info/9119-11_official_story_questions

(9) Fenton's book is "Disconnecting the Dots", published by Trine Day

(10) http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2012/09/18/piers-intv-jesse-ventura-911.cnn

Benghazi attack: Why the White House changed its story

President Obama had to reassess his view of what caused the attack in Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, raising questions about whether the White House has a solid grasp on the angry convulsions rocking the Middle East.

President Obama has been forced to reassess his view of what caused the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, raising questions about whether the White House has a solid grasp on the underpinnings of the angry convulsions rocking the Middle East and the impact of the so-called “Cairo doctrine” laid out by Obama shortly after he took office in 2009.

The White House initially laid the blame for the attack, as well as dozens of other protests that continue to roil the Mideast, on aYouTube clip from a movie called “The Innocence of Muslims” insulting of the Prophet Mohammed. White House spokesman Jay Carney first said the attack came “in response to … a film that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.”

But this week, Mr. Carney changed the White House position and called the killing of Ambassador Stevens and three more diplomatic personnel a “terrorist attack.” In a TV interview Friday, Obama added that radical Libyan factions had used the movie as an “excuse” for a sophisticated incursion.

IN PICTURES: Anger across the Muslim world

To be sure, when President Obama in 2009 offered a “new beginning” for US-Mideast relations based on “mutual respect and mutual interest,” he also acknowledged that turmoil in the region had historical antecedents that “go beyond any current policy debate.”

But emerging information about the attack and the continuing protests, some of which have turned deadly in recent days, have contrasted the President’s lofty hopes for the region with the impact of that policy, and whether it really quells tensions by reducing hatred for the US and the West among radical Muslims. Favorable views in Muslim countries toward the US dropped from 25 percent in 2009 to 15 percent in 2012, according to a Pew Global Attitudes survey released in June.

To some analysts, the seismic cultural and political convulsions in the past year, including protests in 20 nations over the YouTube clip, is testing the central premise of adjusting American interests while wielding softer power in the region.

“On … big issues that help define U.S.-Muslim relations – Iran, the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and the Arab Spring – the President has seen a combination of setback, stalemate, and frustration,” writes Ben Feller of the Associated Press in a detailed analysis.

Overall, President Obama continues to receive significantly higher marks from Americans than hisGOP challenger, Mitt Romney, when it comes to foreign policy.

But the past two weeks have also been a reality check for an administration still trying to understand the Benghazi incursion and the continuing protests across the region, an effort underscored for many Americans by the sight of the black Salafism flags, often claimed by Al Qaeda elements, flying over the US Embassy in Cairo on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Before making broad judgments, some foreign policy analysts urge Americans to consider myriad factors playing into the protests and violence, including localized grievances and power vacuums still unfilled after the US-backed “Arab Spring” uprisings last year. In fact, the US has come to believe that the Benghazi attack may have been partly a response to the drone-killing of a regional Al Qaeda leader with ties to Libya rather than to broader anti-Americanism.

“The current anti-American backlash in the region is the byproduct of genuine misunderstanding, real ignorance, and political jockeying among Islamic groups,” Abdeslam Maghraoui, a Duke University political scientist, tells the AP.

Yet some conservative commentators seized on the White House’s about-face on the genesis of the Benghazi attack as insight into a president unwilling to starkly assess American policy abroad, including what many conservatives see as an apologetic tone and outreach to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama acknowledging that the 14-minute trailer to the film was not the root cause of the attack, writes the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, is for a “staggered and confused” White House to “admit that its doctrinal premises were supremely naïve and its policies deeply corrosive to American influence.”

Some Americans are starting to ask similar questions in the wake of the consulate attack in Benghazi and continued anti-American protests in the region.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken before the White House confirmed Benghazi was a terror attack shows support for Obama’s foreign policy slipping by 5 percent since August, to below 50 percent, with 12 percent of independent voters withdrawing their support.

To be sure, the events in Benghazi are just now starting to emerge from the “fog of war” as an officialState Department investigation is underway to determine the extent, and cause, of the security breach. But one growing perception in the Middle East is that the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other embassy personnel may have been a revenge killing by a group known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb that has been exploiting the power vacuum in Libya.

While the White House may have been under pressure to say something concrete about the Benghazi attack before more details were known, the late acknowledgement of a terror attack suggests to some that the Obama administration has struggled to understand the dynamics of the tumult.

In the case of the Benghazi attack, “I think this is a case of an administration saying what they wished to be true before waiting for all the facts to come in,” a senior retired CIA official told the Daily Beast.

IN PICTURES: Anger across the Muslim world

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