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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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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"When things are unfolding very, very quickly, it’s not always easy to know what is really going on on the ground," Rice told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren.

Condi continued: "So there’s a big picture to be examined here. But we don’t have all of the pieces, and I think it’s easy to try and jump to conclusions about what might have happened here. It’s probably better to let the relevant bodies do their work."

Via ThinkProgress.

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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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The attack against the US Consulate in Benghazi last month claimed the lives of four US diplomatic officials, among them Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya.

According to Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram:

"The independent Al-Masry al-Youm newspaper, quoting interior ministry official General Mohieddin al-Sayyed, said the suspect killed on Wednesday could be an Al-Qaeda militant.

"The Madinat Nasr police department received information indicating that a terrorist, a member of Al-Qaeda, was present in an apartment in Madinat Nasr," Sayyed is quoted as saying."

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A State Department email sent to intelligence officials and the White House situation room said the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter, and also called for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

The document may fuel Republican efforts to show that the White House knew it was a terrorist attack, even as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was saying — five days afterward — that it appeared to be a protest gone awry.

The Obama administration's account of the Benghazi events has become a campaign issue, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney and GOP lawmakers accusing the White House of misleading Americans about the nature of the attack. But militant groups often surface after such attacks claiming responsibility and it's difficult to immediately verify such claims.

The Associated Press and other news organizations obtained the unclassified email and two related emails from government officials who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about them publicly.

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Iran

Fox News Sunday saw Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tow a hawkish line on Iran, calling the crippling program of sanctions currently in place a "miserable failure." "Time for talking is over he said," echoing Bibi Netanyahu's call for the U.S. to draw "red lines" over Iran's nuclear ambitions. "We should be demanding transparency and access to their nuclear program," Graham said.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended the sanctions program against Graham's attacks, "There's unrest in the streets of Tehran and the leaders in Iran are feeling it," he said.

David Axelrod echoed Durbin's point during his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," "They're [Tehran is] feeling the heat. And that's what the sanctions were meant to do. So if they're sensible, they're looking at that and saying it's time to set aside our nuclear ambitions and save our economy."

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Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee overseeing an investigation into the U.S.'s handling of the embassy attack, posted raw State Department cables online late last week. Names of Libyans working with U.S. diplomats were not redacted from the published documents.

"This idea of Chairman Issa, that he's going to dump the names, in public, of Libyans who are risking their lives to support America and keep us safe, in an effort to get a political toehold in this election, is unconscionable," Durbin said

Durbin echoed the now oft-repeated charge, made by both Democrats and Republicans at each other, that Issa was attempting to "politicize" the tragedy in Libya.

The Benghazi attack will likely be a major topic in Monday's final presidential debate, which focuses on foreign policy.

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What I mean by that is that Romney, Republicans and conservatives have, in case after case, simply given up on crafting viable public policy. That wasn’t always the case. When Ronald Reagan took office, conservative think tanks were ready with a host of ideas for transforming what government did and the way it did it. As recently as the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush campaigned on, for example, No Child Left Behind and a faith-based initiative. Does Romney have anything similar he’s talking about during this campaign? Not that I’ve heard.

What he’s substituted for policy is scandal, on the one hand, and symbolism, on the other.

Republicans' reliance on a scandal framework is most obvious in their attacks on Barack Obama. The stimulus is reduced in this point of view to “Solyndra.” Energy? One pipeline to Canada.

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It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went. The Obama administration maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was a result of the mobs that staged less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

Those statements have become highly charged political fodder as the presidential election approaches. A Republican-led House committee questioned State Department officials for hours about what GOP lawmakers said was lax security at the consulate, given the growth of extremist Islamic militants in North Africa.

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And if the administration does find a target, officials say it still has to weigh whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaida is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group's profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight the group in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.

Details on the administration's position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.

In another effort to bolster Libyan security, the Pentagon and State Department have been developing a plan to train and equip a special operations force in Libya, according to a senior defense official.

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During a CNN appearance Thursday, Cutter said that "the entire reason that this has become the, you know, political topic it is is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ... It's a big part of their stump speech." She went on to lambaste Ryan for making the tragedy a "political circus."

Critical responses emerged on Twitter within minutes. Fox News analyst Monica Crowley tweeted,  "can't get much lower than the despicable [Cutter]." RNC Spokesman Tim Miller wrote that Cutter's comment belonged "in the annals of people believing their own BS." Meanwhile, journalist and author Jeremy Scahill lambasted "partisan cogs" in general:

[embedtweet id="256471120541253633"]

For weeks now, as Salon has noted, partisan spats have characterized the discourse in Washington over the embassy attack in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.

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Two former heads of U.S. diplomatic security in Libya testified that requests for additional security to protect American missions in the country were rejected by the state department ahead of the attack.

"The RSO (regional security officer) struggled to obtain additional personnel there, but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with," said Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, former head of embassy security in Libya.

Republicans on the hearing committee were swift to point fingers at the state department, particularly senior official Charlene Lamb who handled and denied the request for extra security. Speaking at the hearing, Lamb maintained that on the night of the attack (Sept. 11,) the U.S. had "the correct number of assets" in Benghazi. Indeed, as was revealed in the hearing, more agents were on the ground at the consulate that night that had been requested by former head of security, Eric Nordstrom.

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The hearing will focus on any failures in security and intelligence that may have overlooked a militant threat from al-Qaida in the region. According to the New York Times, two senior State Department officials responsible for embassy security worldwide will testify, as will a former head of security at the United States Embassy in Tripoli and the former head of an American military team assigned to provide security at the embassy. A main subject of inquiry will be whether the State Department rejected requests from diplomats for increased security at the Libya mission after months of violent incidents.

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The video shows images of the attacks on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and says that Obama spent that day campaigning in Las Vegas. The ad goes on to show various lightweight Obama interview appearances on shows like "The View" and "Late Night With David Letterman." "President Obama needs to learn, being president isn't just about being on TV and protecting your job. It's about leadership," the video says.

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"Benghazi-gate is the right term for this," Blackburn said on Fox News. "This is very, very serious, probably more serious than Watergate. And to call this a response to a video when it was obviously a terrorist attack."

Blackburn and a number other Republicans have accused U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice and the president of initially covering up that the attack on the U.S. consulate was a terrorist attack, instead characterizing it as a response to the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims."

Last week, Mike Huckabee similarly compared the attack in Libya to Watergate, and implied that Obama should be impeached for it.

Via ThinkProgress.

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"It was a planned, coordinated, orchestrated attack led by terrorists, terrorists, Bill," Huckabee said. "And this White House has to explain why it hasn’t owned up to that. Why it can’t say it ... Let's go back. Richard Nixon was forced out of office because he lied. And because he covered some stuff up. I'm going to be blunt and tell you this. Nobody died in Watergate. We have people who are dead because of this. There are questions to be answered and Americans ought to demand to get answers."

Via ThinkProgress.

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The president said that a nuclear Iran would “threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of gulf nations, and the stability of the global economy,” and that the U.S. would "do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” He also used the speech to condemn the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya.

The president pushed again for a diplomatic solution on the issue. As such, he took a stern line with Iran, but did not go so far as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged last week when he asked Obama to draw a "red line" with Iran over nuclear weapons development.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took his thoughts on the U.S. stance to the press, commenting that "a few occupying Zionists are threatening the government of the United States."

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