I grew up in Libya; my childhood friends were Libyan, Palestinian. Egyptian, Lebanese, French, British and American.
This thread saddens me.
Ambassador Stevens was a very fine man, a true friend of the Arab world in general and of Libya in particular, who died risking his own life to save others.
An American friend has pointed out in another place that Libyans risked their own lives to get Ambasador Stevens to hospital, where he died, and to save his body and those of his colleagues from desecration.
I am not sure that, confronted with, literally, a howling mob, I would have had the courage to do that.
As for the whipping up of the crowd, anyone who knows anything knows how easy it is to do that, anywhere - we British can hardly be proud of last summer's riots - and it is of course particularly easy in countries like Libya, with a large population of unemployed and underemployed young men in the big cities.
And as to what really happened, here are two articles which are worth reading.
This is from The Atlantic and was published before the news of the attack on the Benghazi consulate:
http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...cuHdo.facebook
whilst this is from NBC a couple of hours ago; it suggests that far from this being a riot triggered by a film, the attack on the Consulate was carried out by a couple of dozen Islamist extremists on orders from al-Qaeda, to "avenge" the killing of al-Libi in a drone strike, using the fuss caused by the film as cover. Noman Benotman has a very good track record in this area - as indeed he should have.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...-to-libya?lite
