Criminal negligence in Benghazi Attack

The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.

What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal's account of the meeting:

"There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya's permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene."

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

"Some officials said the U.S. could also have sent aircraft to the scene as a 'show of force' to scare off the attackers," the Journal reported, noting that there's a U.S. air base just 450 miles away in Sicily. "State Department officials dismissed the suggestions as unrealistic. 'They would not have gotten there in two hours, four hours or six hours.'"

The U.S. security detail only left Washington at 8 a.m. on Sept. 12, more than 10 hours after the attacks began. A commercial jet liner can fly from D.C. to Benghazi in about the same time.

Obama deserves to be judged in light of what he knew prior to the attack, including an attack on the mission in June and heightened threat warnings throughout the summer.

So how did the administration do on that count? "That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security," an unnamed American official who has served in Libya told the New York Times last week.

Stirrings of Militancy Since the Arab Spring

• Feb., March 2011: Egypt frees militant prisoners.
• April 2011: Ansar al Sharia in Tunisia is founded.
• April 2011: Ansar al Sharia in Yemen, a unit of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is formed.
• Dec. 2011: Ansar al Jihad in the Sinai Peninsula is formed, pledges to "fulfill the oath" of Osama bin Laden.
• June 2012: Bomb damages wall of U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
• Aug. 2012: Militants attack Egyptian security forces in Sinai.
• Sept. 2012: Attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts in Benghazi kill ambassador and three other Americans (left). U.S. officials believe some attackers had links to a militant released from prison in Egypt last year.