Holy **** this is old news.
1.)No one knew who perpetrated the attack at the time and the evidence and intelligence they received was often conflicting and was constantly changing weeks after the attacks.
"After reviewing hundreds of pages of raw intelligence, as well as open source information, it was clear that between the time when the attacks occurred and when the Administration, through Ambassador Susan Rice, appeared on the Sunday talk shows, intelligence analysts and policymakers received a stream of piecemeal intelligence regarding the identities/affiliations and motivations of the attackers, as well as the level of planning and/or coordination. Much of the early intelligence was conflicting, and two years later, intelligence gaps remain.
Along those lines, in the Rose Garden on September 12, 2012, President Obama said that four "extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi," and said that: "[n]o acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."
However, it was not clear whether the terrorist attacks were committed by al-Qa'ida or by various groups of other bad actors, some of who may have been affiliated with al-Qa'ida. Early CIA, NCTC, DIA, and CJCS intelligence assessments on September 12th and 13th stated that members of AAS and various al-Qa'ida affiliates "likely," "probably," or "possibl[y]" participated in the attacks
None of the reports made a definitive assessment of attribution or affiliation that first week after the attacks. A September 12 DIA report, for example, spoke of"unidentified terrorists," 128 and an NCTC
assessment reported that the "Benghazi populace" heard about a security breach at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and they decided to storm the facility in Benghazi. 129 Libyan government officials told the media that the perpetrators of the attacks were loyalists of ousted and deceased Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi.
Weeks after the attacks, intelligence reports similarly remarked on the "fragmentary and contradictory reporting about who organized the attack," and that it is "unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control and if the extremist group leaders directed their members to participate in the attacks or the attackers did so on their own."
As for motivation, while Reuters published a series of news articles right after the attacks that included interviews of individuals who claimed they were eyewitnesses to protests at the compound, 134
there were also early reports that the attacks were not spurred by a protest in Benghazi. 135 The first CIA assessment about the attacks, a September 12th Executive Update, said "the presence of armed assailants from the incident's outset suggests this was an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest. " 136 On September 15, the CIA assessed that the attacks were inspired by the September 11 storming ofthe U.S. Embassy in Cairo. 137 On September 12, the DIA reported that there were no indications of preoperational planning, but that a mix of terrorists attackers "likely leveraged a target of opportunity amidst security vulnerabilities created by protest activity." 138 Weeks afterwards, CIA and NCTC reported that "the attack probably was not specifically planned for 11 September. In total, analysts received 21 reports that a protest occurred in Benghazi-fourteen from the Open Source Center; one from CIA, two from DoD, and four from NSA. "
http://fas.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/benghazi-hpsci.pdf
And this is all consistent with Hillary Clinton's testimony who has openly said that she changed her position on responsibility and motivation for the attack while the intelligence was coming in.
2.)All this claim of why it happened or did it have to do with the video is open ended, because in fact intelligence is still changing on why the attack was carried out. Multiple people from Ansar al Shariah, the group mainly blamed with the attack, has said part of the motivation was that anti-Islamic video. And hell they also claim that they were not the only ones involved in the attack.
Ansar al Shariah issues statement on US Consulate assault in Libya | The Long War Journal http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/w...n-to-answer-questions-on-assault.html?hp&_r=2
