Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood abruptly called off its planned ‘million-man march’ today in protest of a video mocking the Prophet Mohammed, indicating that it realizes that it would be whipping up violence over which it has no control. The back-peddling, however, came too late to stop mass protests in Cairo, which continue as the United States questions whether warnings about the September 11, 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic compounds in Egypt and Libya were ignored or mishandled by U.S. intelligence.
Anti-American protests spread today to almost 20 countries over the anti-Mohammed video.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan when Taliban insurgents attacked Camp Bastion/Camp Leatherneck, a massive facility that serves as the main Afghan base for U.S. Marines and British forces in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province.
Two Tunisians were killed during rioting outside the U.S. embassy in Tunis. Some rioters climbed the embassy wall and removed the American flag and raised a black Islamist flag.
Protesters fought with security forces in Cairo last night and the Egyptian government erected a cement wall to block access to the American embassy. Violent protests resumed outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen with security forces using water cannons and firing warning shots to keep protesters from trying to penetrate and attack the embassy. Protests also were reported in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Qatar, Tunisia, and Jordan, most of which were brief and involved little or no violence. Police in Sudan fired tear gas to prevent protesters from scaling fences outside the German and British embassies. Violent demonstrations were reported in Lebanon where mobs burned a KFC fast food restaurant.
The Obama administration said today that there was no actionable intelligence that could have warned U.S. diplomats prior to the September 11, 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic compounds in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen.
Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who was briefed this morning on intelligence about this week's U.S. embassy attacks, told Fox News this afternoon that he believes the attack on the Benghazi consulate was pre-planned and not spontaneous violence. Rogers said he believes this because of a high degree of command and control, direct and indirect fire, the high level of organization of the attack, and other classified reasons. Rogers noted that some intelligence analysts disagree with him and believe the attacks were spontaneous and stem from the fact that many Libyans are well armed.