This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 10 |
Can we please change the title to 2012 Benghazi attack (phrasing similar to 2011 Norway attacks). The current title is very long and wordy. -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 12:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I edited the fatalities-it's simply ludicrous to have seperate casualties for Americans and Libyans - there may well have been non-belligerent Libyans working in the compound, and the list is usually separated by belligerents to victims. Hope this is ok with everyone. Elliot x — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.28.4.97 ( talk) 22:14, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I really had to search to find this previous list of links to collections of source materials I'd gathered back in October. Presenting it here again. Hope others find it as useful as I have:
The Economic Times Benghazi collection [1]
The Chicago Tribune Benghazi collection [2]
Los Angeles Times Benghazi collection [3]
CNN Benghazi collection [4]
New York Times collection [5]
Foreign Policy Initiative provide a very nice collection of abstracts and links to many different source materials. Day by day:
...and on and on. Just search by date.
For these collections I've just saved the search criteria from Google. So we have searches on each site for "benghazi attack" at:
This last one might be really useful. It's a search on "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites. So this will find U.S. government sites, such as the White House, the State Department, Congressmen, Congressional Committees, etc:
Search "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites [14]
-- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 02:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
There is clearly a dispute about the link at the top of the page. I think the link is valid, and so do other editors. I think that stating any opinion as to the linkage between the events, however, does not necessarily reflect consensus about the relationship between events among opinions of weight. Unless this has been specifically hashed out before, can someone please break down for me who says that Benghazi was related to Innocence of Muslims and who doesn't? I know they happened at the same time, but correlation does not prove causation. Let's talk further here instead of edit summaries. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 00:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
In browsing around I found a controversial section for the movie Zero Dark Thirty. The section on the controversy is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Dark_Thirty#Reception. On the main page, not split off.
Does this support keeping the controversy section with the main page for the Benghazi attack? What do other editors think? Are there other examples of 'controversy' sections staying on the main page of an article? Or, is the Benghazi attack article a different instance; perhaps in anticipation of more sub-pages based on investigative reports to come, criminal investigation, further congressional investigations, who knows....? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 17:53, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Hope this helps us find a consensus. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 01:47, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Here's one: "Intelligence sources and analysts agree that—based on the number of attackers, the types of heavy weapons used (including truck-mounted artillery and mortars), and the complexity and coordination of the attacks—some planning was necessary to execute the assaults on the two complexes." All factual, but not necessary details for lede. We can assume it's a fact that they planned it, unless disputes this fact. Just insert the word planned in the previous paragraph. We could also tag it in case any reader disputes, if anyone sees any likely challenge. I think this is a no-brainer. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 02:28, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Another example: "Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif told NPR on Sept. 16: "The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate."" Again, too high of a level for lede. It's premeditated. We get it. A lede which reads like a legal case does not fulfill the intent of lede, which is to summarize points, not make them. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 02:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Fixed lede bloat by adding a section head which described all the new content summarily, plus summarizing with specific attribution in the newly shortened lede. Now we know who's responsible for the attack in sentence one. We still need references to conform with WP:RS and WP:V. I only had a problem with a sentence or two content-wise - perhaps sources for verification will strengthen the assertions. You guys let me know what you think. We should talk more better. :) ClaudeReigns ( talk) 03:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I reverted, since we just had an agreement, just so we can stay consistent in using consensus to work out lede changes per WP:MOS. Keep in mind that I don't have a strong opinion about most of this. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 05:19, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
“Executed” is kind of awkward in that sentence. “launched an attack” is simply a more fluent phrasing.
American is more appropriate, because it is an adjective. One says “the Italian diplomatic mission”, not the “Italian Republic diplomatic mission”. The same applies to this phrasing here. This applies, except in official titles. Examples: “U.S. Ambassador”, “U.S. Marshal”, “U.S. Army”.
"compound for the consulate” is awkward as well. The compound isn’t really “for” the consulate. It surrounds it, houses it, protects it. So, one could say “compound which protected the consulate”. I’m not sure if past or present tense is appropriate. I’d imagine one should leave it at the present tense for now. So, either “compound which protects the consulate” or “compound which houses the consulate”.
As far as the last phrase, I’d leave it present tense until one can verify otherwise. Originally, my phrasing was going to be “where the Central Intelligence Agency has a post”. I still think that is better than “is posted”, but I thought that would be more contentious, so I left it. RGloucester ( talk) 17:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Is it chronological sense to have this section on responsibility for the attack the first one in the article? Wouldn't it make more sense to have it as, maybe: Background, Attack, Claimed Responsibility, Investigation Timeline....?
Also, in the Ansar al-Sharia responsible section, why were U.S. sources stating that the militants used the video as "cover" or as an "excuse" to launch their attack removed? Isn't this relevant?
A senior U.S. official told CNN: "It was not an innocent mob," the official said. "The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective, but this was a clearly planned military-type attack." [15]
President Obama: "What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests." [16]
Pres. Obama on Letterman: "extremists and terrorists used (the anti-Muslim YouTube video) as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies." [17] -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 18:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Should we change the title of the "Responsibility" section to "Role of Innocence of Muslims? Because right it looks like that's the only thing that section discusses.-- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 04:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Primary:
Secondaries:
I view first reports as being least favorable quality, but necessary to evaluate an important primary source. I have provided three reports from international agencies and one from an internationalist think tank. I hope this shows an effort to balance for int'l POV, but again the event is overwhelmingly about the United States. Feel free to criticize these sources, as we cannot go with all of them, and maybe only one of them, and only temporarily. Thanks for looking. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 05:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Quite frankly, I was pretty dissappointed when this showed up on the page: why is it that a section entirely devoted to allegations that the US media is biased towards the Obama administration- an entirely internal American issue- takes up at least twice the space as the fallout in Libya (not to mention that the whole page has become completely devoted to the US controversy).
This page is turning into a poster case for the America-centrism present on wikipedia, and quite frankly, it looks horrible.
The inclusion of this material is both hugely off-topic and a major NPOV infraction... it belongs on someone's political blog, not on wikipedia. --
Yalens (
talk)
18:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, it seems that we now have two separate complaints. The first is that the article shouldn't cover the political aftermath of the attacks in the United States because this is an article about the actual attacks. This sort of artificial cloistering of an article isn't logical or widely precedented. Articles in Wikipedia are generally holistic. For a better understanding of how this works well, and does so with years of precedence, I'd mention the September 11 attacks, Death of Linda Norgrove, USS Cole bombing or Japanese embassy hostage crisis articles. In the case that the response or reaction section becomes too large to be efficiently contained in the parent article a new article can be created as with the Response to the 2005 London bombings or Reactions to the 2004 Madrid train bombings articles. Still, the section in question here has yet to grow anywhere near that size.
The second argument is an attack on the legitimacy of the material based on the perceived political leanings of some of the reliable sources and quoted figures. Overt partisanship or political idealism in a person's history is not in of itself a reason to exclude their reliably sourced comments on a subject if they otherwise meet the criteria for inclusion, which all the aforementioned people clearly do. Editors working on contemporary subjects will often also notice the inevitability of criticism coming from "one side" rather than the other when discussing a controversy. This is a natural consequence of how we source such material prior to wide spread discussion of the subject in academia, dedicated works of scholarship or the speaking circuit. An excellent example of this, for those willing to do the digging, is the evolution of Criticism of government response to Hurricane Katrina and its parent article. It's also worth noting that the partisan and media disparity in condemnation and criticism is covered in the very section under discussion. TomPointTwo ( talk) 21:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Example lede here and propose to copy relevant information for here to there, create Criticism of 2012 Benghazi attack media coverage and then trim here to summarize general positions and notable proponents. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 02:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
This article's sources are weak, relative to its conclusions, and its argument is disingenuous. The first sentence in section 1 Ansar al-Sharia responsible cites three sources (nos. 4, 5, and 6), yet the only substantive fact in any of them that even tangentially supports the sentence's argument is a statement by one named witness (in source no. 5) who says, with no basis or explanation, "It was the Ansar al-Shariah people." As cited source no. 27 reports: "leaders of the group blamed for the attack, an Islamist organization known as Ansar al Shariah, denied that they had given the order to attack." Cited source no. 4 says, "spokesman Hani al-Mansouri denied that the Ansar al-Shariah brigade had participated." (Contrary to the ideas (in cited source no. 254) of then-CIA Director David Petraeus, who said "He knew almost immediately that Ansar al-Sharia...was responsible for the attack.")
In section 3.1 Assault on the Consulate, the opening sentence says "Between 125 and 150 gunmen" participated in the assault. This info comes from cited source no. 26; in that source, the origin of this number of gunmen is not given. The authors of this cited source do not ascribe that figure to any witness or specific primary source. None of the substantive information in that cited source (no. 26) is attributed to any identified witness. In the texts of the three cited sources (nos. 26, 27, and 28) for the first sentence of section 3.1, none of the substantive information supporting the premise of a military-style attack on the US embassy comes from identified witnesses; the texts are full of anonymous witnesses who tell cartoonish, sensational stories.
Three months after this event, there is still no evidence that corroborates the narrative of a coordinated attack by an organized band of Islamic militants using heavy weapons. As to the current state of US government intelligence, source no. 254 says, "the House and Senate intelligence committees described [testimony and "real-time" video] they heard and saw as informative, albeit not necessarily conclusive," and then it quotes Sen Diane Feinstein, who said, "We don't have all the facts."
This article's title is inaccurate. There is not any genuine evidence that the deaths of the Americans in Benghazi were caused by an intentional attack. A hundred headlines which scream "Benghazi Attack" do not the truth make. The title of cited source no. 28 is most telling: "Timeline of comments on attack on US Consulate," as opposed to a timeline of the events in the so-called attack, itself. This article looks like either an unexamined parroting of a fantastical mass-media premise, or like propaganda being used to push a narrow political agenda. Analogdrift ( talk) 09:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Various content has been criticized by editors as unrelated to the 2012 Benghazi attack or its subsequent investigation.
What is to be done with the material related to media responses to the attack and criticism thereof?
We've had plenty of time to entertain reasons for Keep. In light of the ARB report release, I am deleting speculative material and media reports about calls for investigation now to free up room for content about the investigation itself, its conclusions, and opinions of weight about it. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 06:48, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
What is to be done with the material related to opinion about the attack?
Shall we try the following?
Cuts it down a bit, and I think it is a bit clearer. If we are dropping the “Ansar did it” bit, then one can simply substitute “heavily armed group”. RGloucester ( talk) 01:06, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
This article doesn't contain any info on Rice's withdrawal from secretary of state nomination. Clearly this event had an impact on her career. Shouldn't this be included?-- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 14:33, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Now, I’m glad the timeline was removed from this article, because it was bulky and didn’t really seem appropriate. At the same time, I’m sad to see all that information go to waste. Does anyone else think it might be wise to create a separate article containing the timeline? RGloucester ( talk) 16:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
According to Joan Neuhaus Schaan of the James Baker Institute, not only was there no protest in Benghazi over the Youtube video Innocence of Muslims, but it was not a factor in the September 11 2012 protests in Cairo, either. [emphasis mine] According to Schaan, the crowd in Egypt was protesting the U.S. imprisonment of the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi had called for release of the Blind Sheikh in his inaugural address. "The primary reason for the focus on the video was likely to cast the Americans’ deaths as an unfortunate and unforeseen incident resulting from an inflamed crowd. That video story redirected the debate from scrutinizing our Libyan policies that were supporting known extremists, to a debate centered on blasphemy." She points to this incident in support for her belief that our policies "aid and abet terrorist organizations (as defined by our own State Department) and their associates to overthrow leaders, some of whom have been our allies, through secret decrees accomplished outside of congressional authority."
Aside from a new reframe of the Cairo protests, this does not conflict with any facts I am aware of. How should we consider it? ClaudeReigns ( talk) 19:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Noman Benotman, a Senior analyst at Quilliam believes that the attack was perpetrated by The Imprisoned Sheik Abdul Rahman Brigade. Said Benotman on September 13, "An attack like this would likely have required preparation. This would not seem to be merely a protest which escalated." He refers to a June 5, 2012 detonation of an explosive device outside the U.S. Consulate which he stated that the group later publicized in a video of that attack, timed to coincide with the arrival of an American diplomatic asset.
Nic Robertson, Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister "Pro-al Qaeda group seen behind deadly Benghazi attack" CNN. Sep 13, 2012
More complicated, but not necessarily more muddy. Our job is to evaluate and weigh sources, not to promote theories - although I am starting to develop a humdinger. I find the weight of these sources to be strong. Joan Schaan is an expert in foreign policy. Noman Benotman is a former militiaman and expert on extremist groups. Forbes prints retractions. CNN retracts as well, and the report was written by a Senior International Correspondent. Nothing here conflicts with the findings of ARB. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 03:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 10 |
Can we please change the title to 2012 Benghazi attack (phrasing similar to 2011 Norway attacks). The current title is very long and wordy. -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 12:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I edited the fatalities-it's simply ludicrous to have seperate casualties for Americans and Libyans - there may well have been non-belligerent Libyans working in the compound, and the list is usually separated by belligerents to victims. Hope this is ok with everyone. Elliot x — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.28.4.97 ( talk) 22:14, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I really had to search to find this previous list of links to collections of source materials I'd gathered back in October. Presenting it here again. Hope others find it as useful as I have:
The Economic Times Benghazi collection [1]
The Chicago Tribune Benghazi collection [2]
Los Angeles Times Benghazi collection [3]
CNN Benghazi collection [4]
New York Times collection [5]
Foreign Policy Initiative provide a very nice collection of abstracts and links to many different source materials. Day by day:
...and on and on. Just search by date.
For these collections I've just saved the search criteria from Google. So we have searches on each site for "benghazi attack" at:
This last one might be really useful. It's a search on "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites. So this will find U.S. government sites, such as the White House, the State Department, Congressmen, Congressional Committees, etc:
Search "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites [14]
-- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 02:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
There is clearly a dispute about the link at the top of the page. I think the link is valid, and so do other editors. I think that stating any opinion as to the linkage between the events, however, does not necessarily reflect consensus about the relationship between events among opinions of weight. Unless this has been specifically hashed out before, can someone please break down for me who says that Benghazi was related to Innocence of Muslims and who doesn't? I know they happened at the same time, but correlation does not prove causation. Let's talk further here instead of edit summaries. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 00:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
In browsing around I found a controversial section for the movie Zero Dark Thirty. The section on the controversy is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Dark_Thirty#Reception. On the main page, not split off.
Does this support keeping the controversy section with the main page for the Benghazi attack? What do other editors think? Are there other examples of 'controversy' sections staying on the main page of an article? Or, is the Benghazi attack article a different instance; perhaps in anticipation of more sub-pages based on investigative reports to come, criminal investigation, further congressional investigations, who knows....? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 17:53, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
Hope this helps us find a consensus. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 01:47, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Here's one: "Intelligence sources and analysts agree that—based on the number of attackers, the types of heavy weapons used (including truck-mounted artillery and mortars), and the complexity and coordination of the attacks—some planning was necessary to execute the assaults on the two complexes." All factual, but not necessary details for lede. We can assume it's a fact that they planned it, unless disputes this fact. Just insert the word planned in the previous paragraph. We could also tag it in case any reader disputes, if anyone sees any likely challenge. I think this is a no-brainer. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 02:28, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Another example: "Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif told NPR on Sept. 16: "The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate."" Again, too high of a level for lede. It's premeditated. We get it. A lede which reads like a legal case does not fulfill the intent of lede, which is to summarize points, not make them. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 02:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Fixed lede bloat by adding a section head which described all the new content summarily, plus summarizing with specific attribution in the newly shortened lede. Now we know who's responsible for the attack in sentence one. We still need references to conform with WP:RS and WP:V. I only had a problem with a sentence or two content-wise - perhaps sources for verification will strengthen the assertions. You guys let me know what you think. We should talk more better. :) ClaudeReigns ( talk) 03:24, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I reverted, since we just had an agreement, just so we can stay consistent in using consensus to work out lede changes per WP:MOS. Keep in mind that I don't have a strong opinion about most of this. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 05:19, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
“Executed” is kind of awkward in that sentence. “launched an attack” is simply a more fluent phrasing.
American is more appropriate, because it is an adjective. One says “the Italian diplomatic mission”, not the “Italian Republic diplomatic mission”. The same applies to this phrasing here. This applies, except in official titles. Examples: “U.S. Ambassador”, “U.S. Marshal”, “U.S. Army”.
"compound for the consulate” is awkward as well. The compound isn’t really “for” the consulate. It surrounds it, houses it, protects it. So, one could say “compound which protected the consulate”. I’m not sure if past or present tense is appropriate. I’d imagine one should leave it at the present tense for now. So, either “compound which protects the consulate” or “compound which houses the consulate”.
As far as the last phrase, I’d leave it present tense until one can verify otherwise. Originally, my phrasing was going to be “where the Central Intelligence Agency has a post”. I still think that is better than “is posted”, but I thought that would be more contentious, so I left it. RGloucester ( talk) 17:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Is it chronological sense to have this section on responsibility for the attack the first one in the article? Wouldn't it make more sense to have it as, maybe: Background, Attack, Claimed Responsibility, Investigation Timeline....?
Also, in the Ansar al-Sharia responsible section, why were U.S. sources stating that the militants used the video as "cover" or as an "excuse" to launch their attack removed? Isn't this relevant?
A senior U.S. official told CNN: "It was not an innocent mob," the official said. "The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective, but this was a clearly planned military-type attack." [15]
President Obama: "What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests." [16]
Pres. Obama on Letterman: "extremists and terrorists used (the anti-Muslim YouTube video) as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies." [17] -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 18:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Should we change the title of the "Responsibility" section to "Role of Innocence of Muslims? Because right it looks like that's the only thing that section discusses.-- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 04:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Primary:
Secondaries:
I view first reports as being least favorable quality, but necessary to evaluate an important primary source. I have provided three reports from international agencies and one from an internationalist think tank. I hope this shows an effort to balance for int'l POV, but again the event is overwhelmingly about the United States. Feel free to criticize these sources, as we cannot go with all of them, and maybe only one of them, and only temporarily. Thanks for looking. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 05:54, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Quite frankly, I was pretty dissappointed when this showed up on the page: why is it that a section entirely devoted to allegations that the US media is biased towards the Obama administration- an entirely internal American issue- takes up at least twice the space as the fallout in Libya (not to mention that the whole page has become completely devoted to the US controversy).
This page is turning into a poster case for the America-centrism present on wikipedia, and quite frankly, it looks horrible.
The inclusion of this material is both hugely off-topic and a major NPOV infraction... it belongs on someone's political blog, not on wikipedia. --
Yalens (
talk)
18:55, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, it seems that we now have two separate complaints. The first is that the article shouldn't cover the political aftermath of the attacks in the United States because this is an article about the actual attacks. This sort of artificial cloistering of an article isn't logical or widely precedented. Articles in Wikipedia are generally holistic. For a better understanding of how this works well, and does so with years of precedence, I'd mention the September 11 attacks, Death of Linda Norgrove, USS Cole bombing or Japanese embassy hostage crisis articles. In the case that the response or reaction section becomes too large to be efficiently contained in the parent article a new article can be created as with the Response to the 2005 London bombings or Reactions to the 2004 Madrid train bombings articles. Still, the section in question here has yet to grow anywhere near that size.
The second argument is an attack on the legitimacy of the material based on the perceived political leanings of some of the reliable sources and quoted figures. Overt partisanship or political idealism in a person's history is not in of itself a reason to exclude their reliably sourced comments on a subject if they otherwise meet the criteria for inclusion, which all the aforementioned people clearly do. Editors working on contemporary subjects will often also notice the inevitability of criticism coming from "one side" rather than the other when discussing a controversy. This is a natural consequence of how we source such material prior to wide spread discussion of the subject in academia, dedicated works of scholarship or the speaking circuit. An excellent example of this, for those willing to do the digging, is the evolution of Criticism of government response to Hurricane Katrina and its parent article. It's also worth noting that the partisan and media disparity in condemnation and criticism is covered in the very section under discussion. TomPointTwo ( talk) 21:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Example lede here and propose to copy relevant information for here to there, create Criticism of 2012 Benghazi attack media coverage and then trim here to summarize general positions and notable proponents. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 02:25, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
This article's sources are weak, relative to its conclusions, and its argument is disingenuous. The first sentence in section 1 Ansar al-Sharia responsible cites three sources (nos. 4, 5, and 6), yet the only substantive fact in any of them that even tangentially supports the sentence's argument is a statement by one named witness (in source no. 5) who says, with no basis or explanation, "It was the Ansar al-Shariah people." As cited source no. 27 reports: "leaders of the group blamed for the attack, an Islamist organization known as Ansar al Shariah, denied that they had given the order to attack." Cited source no. 4 says, "spokesman Hani al-Mansouri denied that the Ansar al-Shariah brigade had participated." (Contrary to the ideas (in cited source no. 254) of then-CIA Director David Petraeus, who said "He knew almost immediately that Ansar al-Sharia...was responsible for the attack.")
In section 3.1 Assault on the Consulate, the opening sentence says "Between 125 and 150 gunmen" participated in the assault. This info comes from cited source no. 26; in that source, the origin of this number of gunmen is not given. The authors of this cited source do not ascribe that figure to any witness or specific primary source. None of the substantive information in that cited source (no. 26) is attributed to any identified witness. In the texts of the three cited sources (nos. 26, 27, and 28) for the first sentence of section 3.1, none of the substantive information supporting the premise of a military-style attack on the US embassy comes from identified witnesses; the texts are full of anonymous witnesses who tell cartoonish, sensational stories.
Three months after this event, there is still no evidence that corroborates the narrative of a coordinated attack by an organized band of Islamic militants using heavy weapons. As to the current state of US government intelligence, source no. 254 says, "the House and Senate intelligence committees described [testimony and "real-time" video] they heard and saw as informative, albeit not necessarily conclusive," and then it quotes Sen Diane Feinstein, who said, "We don't have all the facts."
This article's title is inaccurate. There is not any genuine evidence that the deaths of the Americans in Benghazi were caused by an intentional attack. A hundred headlines which scream "Benghazi Attack" do not the truth make. The title of cited source no. 28 is most telling: "Timeline of comments on attack on US Consulate," as opposed to a timeline of the events in the so-called attack, itself. This article looks like either an unexamined parroting of a fantastical mass-media premise, or like propaganda being used to push a narrow political agenda. Analogdrift ( talk) 09:31, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Various content has been criticized by editors as unrelated to the 2012 Benghazi attack or its subsequent investigation.
What is to be done with the material related to media responses to the attack and criticism thereof?
We've had plenty of time to entertain reasons for Keep. In light of the ARB report release, I am deleting speculative material and media reports about calls for investigation now to free up room for content about the investigation itself, its conclusions, and opinions of weight about it. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 06:48, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
What is to be done with the material related to opinion about the attack?
Shall we try the following?
Cuts it down a bit, and I think it is a bit clearer. If we are dropping the “Ansar did it” bit, then one can simply substitute “heavily armed group”. RGloucester ( talk) 01:06, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
This article doesn't contain any info on Rice's withdrawal from secretary of state nomination. Clearly this event had an impact on her career. Shouldn't this be included?-- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 14:33, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Now, I’m glad the timeline was removed from this article, because it was bulky and didn’t really seem appropriate. At the same time, I’m sad to see all that information go to waste. Does anyone else think it might be wise to create a separate article containing the timeline? RGloucester ( talk) 16:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
According to Joan Neuhaus Schaan of the James Baker Institute, not only was there no protest in Benghazi over the Youtube video Innocence of Muslims, but it was not a factor in the September 11 2012 protests in Cairo, either. [emphasis mine] According to Schaan, the crowd in Egypt was protesting the U.S. imprisonment of the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi had called for release of the Blind Sheikh in his inaugural address. "The primary reason for the focus on the video was likely to cast the Americans’ deaths as an unfortunate and unforeseen incident resulting from an inflamed crowd. That video story redirected the debate from scrutinizing our Libyan policies that were supporting known extremists, to a debate centered on blasphemy." She points to this incident in support for her belief that our policies "aid and abet terrorist organizations (as defined by our own State Department) and their associates to overthrow leaders, some of whom have been our allies, through secret decrees accomplished outside of congressional authority."
Aside from a new reframe of the Cairo protests, this does not conflict with any facts I am aware of. How should we consider it? ClaudeReigns ( talk) 19:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Noman Benotman, a Senior analyst at Quilliam believes that the attack was perpetrated by The Imprisoned Sheik Abdul Rahman Brigade. Said Benotman on September 13, "An attack like this would likely have required preparation. This would not seem to be merely a protest which escalated." He refers to a June 5, 2012 detonation of an explosive device outside the U.S. Consulate which he stated that the group later publicized in a video of that attack, timed to coincide with the arrival of an American diplomatic asset.
Nic Robertson, Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister "Pro-al Qaeda group seen behind deadly Benghazi attack" CNN. Sep 13, 2012
More complicated, but not necessarily more muddy. Our job is to evaluate and weigh sources, not to promote theories - although I am starting to develop a humdinger. I find the weight of these sources to be strong. Joan Schaan is an expert in foreign policy. Noman Benotman is a former militiaman and expert on extremist groups. Forbes prints retractions. CNN retracts as well, and the report was written by a Senior International Correspondent. Nothing here conflicts with the findings of ARB. ClaudeReigns ( talk) 03:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)