The leaders of an independent panel issued the scathing assessment in a review that, according to Reuters, found "leadership and management" deficiencies in the department and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who could — and should — have made decisions involving security.

The findings of the Accountability Review Board, some of which are classified and will only be heard behind closed doors before the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, may taint the four-year tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Reuters wrote.

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"Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," the panel said.

The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in Eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action now. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.

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"If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly -- to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities," Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama, NBC News first reported. "That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country ... Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time."

"The position of Secretary of State should never be politicized," Rice continued. "As someone who grew up in an era of comparative bipartisanship and as a sitting U.S. national security official who has served in two U.S. Administrations, I am saddened that we have reached this point, even before you have decided whom to nominate. We cannot afford such an irresponsible distraction from the most pressing issues facing the American people."

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He is reported to have sent his deputy foreign minister, Faisal al-Miqdad, on a trip to Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela to sound out their respective leaders about the possibility of asylum.

All three countries have left-wing governments that are, to varying degrees and in different ways, antagonistic toward the US.

The most likely destination for the Syrian despot would appear to be Venezuela. Its President Hugo Chavez recently described Assad as his country’s “legitimate” leader.

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"I wouldn't lie to you. I see that we're covering Benghazi a lot, and I think that should be something that we're asking about. We've had the proper emphasis. But I would not be so deluded to say that some of our shows, some of our commentators, have covered it more than it needed to be covered," he told the AP.

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The United States, which had only small numbers of C.I.A. officers in Libya during the tumult of the rebellion, provided little oversight of the arms shipments. Within weeks of endorsing Qatar’s plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups. They were “more antidemocratic, more hard-line, closer to an extreme version of Islam” than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official.

More than a year after the overthrow of Gaddafi, Libyan authorities have failed to establish full control over Libya’s disparate armed factions. According to the Times, "The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government."

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Rice met with a number of Republican senators this week to try to win them over, ahead of a possible nomination for secretary of state. But so far she has not been successful.

“I continue to be troubled by the fact that the United Nations ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters on Wednesday. She added that she “would need to have additional information” before voting to confirm Rice.

Collins, a moderate, would be a key Republican vote in the Senate if Obama were to nominate Rice. “Everybody knows [Collins] does her homework very carefully and that she thinks before she speaks, so it’s not a good sign for Susan Rice,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

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But, according to the poll, only 40 percent of those surveyed say that they believe the Obama Administration purposely misled the public. "Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

48 percent of respondents also said that they believe the attack could have been prevented.

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The discussions, beginning Tuesday, will focus on her much-maligned explanations of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, officials said, but she's also clearly auditioning for America's top diplomatic job.

Despite lingering questions over her comments five days after the Benghazi attack, Rice has emerged as the front-runner on a short list of candidates to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton, with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seen as her closest alternative. But despite a softening of Republican opposition to Rice, she still has work to do to ensure that enough GOP senators are willing to back her potential nomination.

Rice's series of meetings on Capitol Hill this week will therefore be a critical test both for Republicans, who will decide whether they can support her, and the administration, which must gauge whether Rice has enough support to merit a nomination. According to congressional aides and administration officials, Rice is expected to meet with small groups of lawmakers who will press her on her since-retracted description of the Benghazi attack as the byproduct of an angry protest over an American-made film ridiculing Islam. She'll be joined by acting CIA Director Michael Morell in the meetings.

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Via Think Progress:

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Benghazi:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the top Republican in the Senate Intelligence Committee, told "Fox News Sunday" that he expects Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will testify before the Senate about the Benghazi attacks. "At some point [Rice] needs to come in and say what the president or the White House directed her to say," Chambliss said.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory also pushed chair of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), on whether the White House and Rice had misled the public in saying early on that the attacks were spontaneous protests, while intelligence pointed to a terrorist plot.

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The answers could explain why President Barack Obama and top aides, including U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, described the attack for days afterward as a protest against an anti-Islam video that spontaneously turned violent and why they played down any potential link to al-Qaida, despite evidence to the contrary.

Administration officials have defended the portrayal of the attack as relying on the best information available at the time that didn't compromise classified intelligence. Democrats say CIA and other intelligence officials signed off on the final talking points.

Republicans have alleged a Watergate-like cover up, accusing White House aides of hiding the terrorism link in the run-up to the Nov. 6 presidential election so voters wouldn't question Obama's claim that al-Qaida's power had diminished.

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To judge by what representatives of each party told the press after the hearing, you’d think they attended entirely different meetings. Republicans seem to think that Petraeus completely undercut the Obama administration’s account of the attacks on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, while Democrats insist he backed up that account.

"The fact is, the reference to al-Qaida was taken out somewhere along the line by someone outside the intelligence community ... We need to find out who did it and why,” said Republican Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, who attended the first of two back-to-back hearings with Petraeus. (The second was with senators.) "The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda ... He completely debunked that idea," said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of the very same meeting.

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The media has been gushing, even fawning, in its description of Petraeus’ accomplishments, and his disgrace is being portrayed as a national disaster.

The reality is much more mundane, as is the man at the center of all the fuss. His fall from grace is a personal tragedy, and he and his family will have to deal with that. Petraeus was a fine officer with a keen mind and an impressive work ethic. But he is not the miracle worker that is now being painted.

Even in disgrace, Petraeus is indispensable. The just-resigned CIA director was called to testify Friday at congressional hearings about the September attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Petraeus, who resigned from the CIA post on Friday because of an extra-marital affair, indicated his willingness to testify. No date for his testimony has been set.

She said his testimony to her committee will be limited to the Benghazi attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. No date for his testimony has been set. Petraeus was CIA director at the time.

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Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday that CIA security officers went to the aid of State Department staff less than 25 minutes after they got the first call for help from the consulate, which was less than a mile from a CIA annex. The detailed timeline provides the first in-depth look at how deeply the CIA was involved in the rescue attempt, and it comes amid persistent questions about whether the Obama administration responded as quickly and effectively as it could to the siege.

The attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 by what is now suspected to be a group of al-Qaida-linked militants killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

U.S. officials described the timeline in a clear effort to rebut recent news reports that said the CIA told its personnel to "stand down" rather than go to the consulate to help repel the attackers. Fox News reported that when CIA officers at the annex called higher-ups to tell them the consulate was under fire, they were twice told to "stand down." The CIA publicly denied the report.

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My short answer: the enduring power of a foreign policy myth that will not die, the decades-old idea that America has an inalienable right to “own” the world and control every place in it. I mean, you can’t lose what you never had.

This campaign season teaches us how little has changed since the early Cold War days when Republican stalwarts screamed, “Who lost China?” More than six decades later, it’s still surprisingly easy to fill the political air with anxiety by charging that we’ve “lost” a country or, worse yet, a whole region that we were somehow supposed to “have.”

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As for the storm, everyone, of course, said their focus is on the well-being of people in the storm’s path, but pundits couldn’t help but try to find the political angle as well. There seem to be two main theories: One is that the race will essentially be frozen in place as the media and everyone else shifts focus away from the election for the next few days. Since Obama remains slightly ahead in key swing states, this scenario is seen as helping him by preventing Romney from gaining traction. Obama could also earn points by “looking presidential” while leading a successful federal response to the disaster, pundits said.

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