Senate Committee's harsh assessment of State Department handling of Benghazi

Fox News:

A scathing Senate committee report on the Benghazi terrorist attack faults the State Department for failing to adequately respond to mounting security threats in the lead-up to the assault. The report says the facility was woefully under-protected at a time when the region, according to a top department official, was "flashing red" -- yet security was not improved, and nobody recommended the compound be shut down.

The report, produced by the Senate homeland security committee and obtained by Fox News, follows the release of a State Department-commissioned review earlier in the month. Both are highly critical of the department.

"It is so clear that (the Benghazi compound) is dangerous and what happened was due to extremely poor security," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Monday.

The Senate report noted the "large amount of evidence" in the months preceding the attack that Benghazi was "increasingly dangerous and unstable," with an attack on Americans becoming "much more likely."

"While this intelligence was effectively shared within the Intelligence Community (IC) and with key officials at the Department of State, it did not lead to a commensurate increase in security at Benghazi nor to a decision to close the American mission there, either of which would have been more than justified by the intelligence presented," the report said.

The report said it was "widely understood" that the Libyan government could not adequately protect U.S. personnel, yet the State Department did not move to fill the "security gap." The Senate committee said "no security standards" applied to the Benghazi post -- there were "few meaningful physical barriers," according to the report.

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I would add much of the media in terms of a failure to follow this story and the major screw up by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  Fox News and to some extent CBS News were the only ones who really dug into the facts in this story when it first broke shortly before the election.  It appears that most of the other major media were trying to protect the President from the public embarrassment he clearly deserved   He showed incompetence in managing as well as incompetence in responding to events.  He has yet to go after the group responsible for the attack while he is pushing the failed lawfare policies of the past.