If there were ships in the Mediterranean Sea looks like Benghazi is is right on the coast. Looks like they may have been near enough to help out. But I don’t know what planes are available on what ships.
Quite right. It is readily accessible from the sea and centrally located.
Because of the problems in the region, it is likely there were some US ships in the area off Benghazi and all would have had some capability to react and especially if it were foreseen there might be trouble (anniversary of 9/11, lots of alarming intel... what could possibly go wrong?...).
That would have been approximately equidistant from Tripoli, Tunis and Egypt - areas where there was known trouble at the time. NAS Sigonella, of course would have been the closest major land base to Libya but there are others in the Med which could have been used for staging as well. Plus we could have an increased Marine presence in Tripoli.
Frankly, the Quick Reaction Teams taken out of Libya and testified to at the Congressional hearing would have been ideal protection with further depth planned at sea and from other areas including back up Marines from Tripoli.
Somebody screwed up, big time. It's either that or we purposely led with our chin for some reason. Frankly, it is looking more and more like it was the latter.
Again, the questions are "who" and "why"? I doubt we'll see the answers before the election.