No “Actionable Intelligence”: Diplomatic Posts Targeted Repeatedly in Benghazi in Run-up to Terror Attack

Move along, folks, nothing to see here. Besides, Mitt Romney!

While the Obama administration says there was no “actionable intelligence” foreshadowing the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, there were at least four attacks on diplomatic and western targets in Benghazi leading up to the murder of the U.S. ambassador.

“This (the U.S. Consulate) was a place that was targeted months before with an IED (improvised explosive device),” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee who has been briefed on the attack and investigation, told Fox News.  “It’s clearly a target that they wanted to hit and they wanted to cause casualties. … It’s just too many coincidences here”

On June 6, an IED was thrown at the perimeter of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. On June 11, the British ambassador’s motorcade came under attack by a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG.  Two security personnel were injured.  Seven days later, on June 18, armed gunmen attacked the Tunisian consulate and burned its flag.  And on Aug. 5, five weeks before the assault on the U.S. Consulate, the International Committee of the Red Cross building in Benghazi was also struck by RPGs.

On Friday, the chairman and ranking members of the Senate homeland security committee, Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, sent a letter to the State Department inspector general requesting an investigation into the U.S. Consulate’s security posture at the time of the attack. The letter specifically references the previous attacks in June on the consulate and the British ambassador’s convoy, adding:

“Does the risk assessment process consider the capacity or lack thereof of the host country to provide security? Did the Libyan government request or suggest that security could be improved at the Benghazi facility prior to September 12^th, 2010?”