The warning signs before the Benghazi attack

Reuters:

In the months before the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies warned the White House and State Department repeatedly that the region was becoming an increasingly dangerous vortex for jihadist groups loosely linked or sympathetic to al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.

Despite those warnings, and bold public displays by Islamist militants around Benghazi, embassies in the region were advised to project a sense of calm and normalcy in the run-up to the anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the United States.

So brazen was the Islamist presence in the Benghazi area that militants convened what they billed as the "First Annual Conference of Supporters of Shariah (Islamic law)" in the city in early June, promoting the event on Islamist websites.

Pictures from the conference posted on various Internet forums featured convoys flying al Qaeda banners, said Josh Lefkowitz of Flashpoint-Intel.com, a firm that monitors militant websites. Video clips showed vehicles with mounted artillery pieces, he added.

A research report prepared for a Pentagon counter-terrorism unit in August said the Benghazi conference brought together representatives of at least 15 Islamist militias. Among the paper's conclusions: these groups "probably make up the bulk of al Qaeda's network in Libya."

Drawing on multiple public sources, the Library of Congress researchers who drafted the paper also concluded that al Qaeda had used the "lack of security" in Libya to establish training camps there. It also reported that "hundreds of Islamic militants are in and around Derna," where special camps provided recruits with "weapons and physical training."

President Barack Obama's administration has repeatedly said it had no specific advance warning of an attack like the one that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi on the night of September 11.

But the reports of militants' growing clout in eastern Libya, and attempts by violent jihadists to take advantage of fragile new governments across northern Africa following the Arab Spring, appear to raise new questions about whether U.S. embassies took proper security precautions, and if not, why not.

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There were specific events that would have led an analyst to the conclusion that it was a very dangerous place sucha as teh attacks on Western targets and the direct attack on the compound using an IED.  Then there was the Facebook threat against the ambassador only days before hand.  About the only thing lacking was a letter to Obama giving the time of the attack and the plan of battle.

But, that is the kind of thing that happens rarely in a war, Antietam comes to mind in the Civil War where the Union forces found a copy of Lee's battle plans.   But there were enough chards of evidence and warnings that suggest the security of the facility either needed to be beefed up considerable or the place should have been abandoned until the security situation inmproved.