Benghazi Ringleader Ahmed Abu Khattala Claims Attack Was About the Anti-Islam Video

To listen to conservatives, the attack on Benghazi was meticulously coordinated, planned, and orchestrated with surgical precision, while the State Department, working carefully with the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda/The Taliban/”they’re all the same, okay?”, stood by and did nothing in an attack that killed four American citizens. It’s also one of the worst attacks on America in the History of Dick Cheney’s memory. This was followed by a transparent cover up that’s worthy of impeachment.

But if you listen to one of the people who were behind the attack — in fact, if you listen to the ringleader himself — you get a different story. Ahmed Abu Khattala was captured by US personnel Sunday in response to an indictment for murder in connection with his role as the suspected ringleader in the Benghazi attacks. According to the New York Times, Khattala told the Libyans the night of the attack “that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.” The Times reports that:

What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.

An earlier demonstration venting anger over the video outside the American Embassy in Cairo had culminated in a breach of its walls, and it dominated Arab news coverage. Mr. Abu Khattala told both fellow Islamist fighters and others that the attack in Benghazi was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him.

In an interview days after the attack, he pointedly declined to say whether he believed an offense such as the anti-Islamic video might indeed warrant the destruction of the diplomatic mission or the killing of the ambassador. “From a religious point of view, it is hard to say whether it is good or bad,” he said.

Conservatives in general, but FOX and the Tea Party in particular, have said numerous times that the talking points the administration gave shortly after the attacks were obscuring the real cause of the terror attacks, and being used to bolster Obama during an election year.

According to Media Matters, “The Times article is consistent with media reports from the scene of the attack that suggested the anti-Islam video had been a motive for at least some of the attackers. That video triggered anti-American protests across the Muslim world.”

The conservatives screaming about #Benghazi were wrong. Imagine that. Do you think they’ll stop wasting millions of tax dollars on witch hunts, now?