A new report reveals the local Libyans it hired weren't armed and didn't have security experience.
It is, as my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg has noted, to be lamented that the conversation around the attack on the U.S. consulate and nearby annex in Benghazi, Libya, has become so focused on who said what when instead of on the underlying security and foreign-policy issues. Today, American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-backed Republican super PAC, is out with a Web video criticizing the Obama administration's repeated mentions of an American anti-Muslim video that sparked riots and protests in dozens of cities around the globe, leading to at least 49 deaths in 10 days and injuries to hundreds.
The video focuses on the administration's repeated repudiations of the anti-Muslim video that sparked a riot in front of the American embassy in Cairo, including statements made after the attack on the consulate in Libya when the film was continuing to roil international waters.
Meanwhile, the story of what happened with the consular security in Libya is continuing to come into view as journalists, such as a most excellent team at Reuters, have dug into the practices of Welsh security contractor the Blue Mountain Group, which was brought on by the State Department to oversee the new and potentially temporary consular compound in Benghazi. What the reporters found is astonishing, considering how many armed guards one finds in much less dangerous environs in the United States: "Blue Mountain guards patrolled with flashlights and batons instead of guns."