Free Republic

The Washington Post reports that “the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view” of September 11, 2012, “suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.”  What the Post doesn’t say is that the Cairo protest was itself an al Qaeda-infused, if not outright orchestrated, event.The “hybrid” explanation is a compromise, of sorts, between two competing narratives. The first suggested that a protest against an anti-Islam film in Benghazi led to a “spontaneous” assault on the US consulate there. We know that version...

Terrorists aren’t supposed to get visas. But Hani Nour Eldin was apparently invited to D.C. this week to meet with top officials. Did no one Google him? It was supposed to be a routine meeting for Egyptian legislators in Washington, an opportunity for senior Obama administration officials to meet with new members of Egypt’s parliament and exchange ideas on the future of relations between the two countries. Instead, the visit this week looks like it’s turning into a political fiasco. Included in the delegation of Egyptian lawmakers was Hani Nour Eldin, who, in addition to being a newly elected member...

USA Today reports that the riot at the U.S. embassy in Cairo appears to have been planned well before the Egyptian media reported on the anti-Islam YouTube film that was blamed for sparking the protest. The protest was reportedly announced on August 30 by Gamaa Islamiyya, an Egyptian terrorist group, to call for the release of its leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman — aka the blind sheik, who is serving a life sentence for the first World Trade Center bombing:

RIVERSIDE'S TERROR RALLY By CHARLES E.F. MILLARD October 18, 2006 -- In the uproar over Monday's outrageously soft sentence for terror-aiding lawyer Lynne Stewart, Riverside Church seems to be distancing itself from the despicable rally it hosted in her support Sunday. Stewart was convicted by a jury of her peers. The uncontested facts were that she had smuggled messages from convicted terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman ("the blind sheik") to his followers in the Islamic world. Those messages directed his followers in the terror group Gama'a Islamiyya to end their cease-fire with the Egyptian government and begin killing Rahman's enemies. Rahman,...