UPDATE: Ambassador Stevens was tortured, killed, his body dragged through the streets of Benghazi. Reportedly, the Libyan security team guarding the U.S. consulate in Benghazi told the violent mob where Stevens was. Read more here.
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Yesterday, a Muslim mob stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo, tearing the American flag to shreds and replacing it with a black Islam flag proclaiming how “great” their demon-god Allah is. The mob rampaged and desecrated the U.S. flag in protest against a new movie that they claim is disrespectful of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, if he actually existed.
(Click here for why the movie is just a ruse.)
Muslims in Libya also ran amuck in a rage about the same movie. They stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, with a dozen Americans inside, guarded only by inept Libyan security; then launched a rocket attack on a car carrying the U.S. ambassador to Libya, 52-year-old Christopher Stevens, killing him and three other embassy staff.
Murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens
Tamim Elyan and Omar al-Mosmari report for Reuters, Sept. 12, 2012:
The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.
Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year’s uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one U.S. consular official. The building was evacuated.
The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire. [...] Libyan deputy prime minister Mustafa Abu Shagour condemned the killing of the U.S. diplomats as a cowardly act.
The consular official had died after clashes between Libyan security forces and Islamist militants around the consulate building. Looters raided the empty compound and some onlookers took pictures after calm returned.
[...] U.S. pastor Terry Jones, who had inflamed anger in the Muslim world in 2010 with plans to burn the Koran, said he had promoted “Innocence of Muslims”, which U.S. media said was produced by an Israeli-American property developer; but clips of another film called “Mohammad, Prophet of Muslims”, had been circulating for weeks before the protest. That film portrayed Mohammad as a fool, a philanderer and a religious fake. In one clip posted on YouTube Mohammad was shown in a sexual act with a woman.
Jones, a pastor in Florida whose latest stunt fell on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, triggered riots in Afghanistan in 2010 with his threat to burn the Koran.
Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet offensive and any depiction of him can cause outbursts of anger in the Islamic world and among Muslims in Europe.
Libya’s interim government has struggled to impose its authority on a myriad of armed groups that have refused to lay down their weapons and often take the law into their own hands. It was clearly overwhelmed by Tuesday night’s attack on the consulate that preceded the assault on the ambassador. “The Libyan security forces came under heavy fire and we were not prepared for the intensity of the attack,” said Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya’s Supreme Security Committee.
In Benghazi, unidentified men had shot at the consulate buildings, while others threw handmade bombs into the compound, setting off small explosions.
ABC News says a group called Ansar al Sharia, with close ties to al Qaeda, has claimed “responsibility” for the attacks in Libya. A senior U.S. official said the State Department is on alert throughout the Arab region and fear there could be more attacks to come.”
While condemning the attacks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also apologized for Muslims getting their “feelings” hurt. Referring to the movie, she condemns “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” (via Washington Post)
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Way to go, Hillary and your boss, the POS in the Oval Office, making a moral equivalence between a movie that Muslims find offensive, and the assassination of a U.S. ambassador and the storming of a U.S. embassy and a U.S. consulate.
The two of you make me puke.
~Eowyn
