Obama Blames ‘Sloppiness’ for Benghazi Attack

Mr. Obama, in an interview on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” reaffirmed a decision by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to carry out all 29 of the panel’s recommendations, including sending 225 additional Marine guards to embassies and consulates and revamping how threat warnings are used to secure posts.

“My message to the State Department has been very simple, and that is we’re going to solve this,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re not going to be defensive about it; we’re not going to pretend that this was not a problem — this was a huge problem.”

Mr. Obama said one major finding — that the State Department relied too heavily on untested local Libyan militias to safeguard the compound in Benghazi, Libya — reflected “internal reviews” by the government.

“It confirms what we had already seen based on some of our internal reviews; there was just some sloppiness, not intentional, in terms of how we secure embassies in areas where you essentially don’t have governments that have a lot of capacity to protect those embassies,” Mr. Obama said.

Four State Department officials were removed from their posts this month after the five-member panel led by a former ambassador, Thomas R. Pickering, criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi that was attacked on Sept. 11, leading to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has been one of the fiercest critics of the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack, said on Sunday that the Senate should delay confirmation hearings on Mr. Obama’s choice to be his next secretary of state, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, until Mrs. Clinton fulfills her promise to testify to Congress.

“I want to know from the secretary of state’s point of view, ‘Were you informed of the deteriorating security situation?’ ” Mr. Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.” “ ‘Were all these cables coming out of Benghazi? Did they ever get up to your level? And if they didn’t, that’s a problem. If they did, why didn’t you act differently?’ I think it’s very important to know how the intelligence coming from Libya, how it was received in the State Department, so we can learn and correct any mistakes.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, also said on the same program that it was important to hear from Mrs. Clinton.

“The problem was the right people apparently either didn’t make the decision or didn’t analyze the intelligence, because I think if you looked at the intelligence, you would have substantially beefed up the security in that particular mission, in Benghazi,” Ms. Feinstein said. “It didn’t happen sufficiently.”

The senators made these comments before it had been made public on Sunday that Mrs. Clinton had been hospitalized with a blood clot stemming from a concussion she suffered earlier this month.

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Syria Uses Cluster Bombs to Attack as Many Civilians as Possible

After the screams and the desperate gathering of the victims, the staff at the local Freedom Hospital counted 4 dead and 23 wounded. All were civilians, doctors and residents said.

Many forms of violence and hardship have befallen Syria’s people as the country’s civil war has escalated this year. But the Syrian government’s attack here on Dec. 12 pointed to one of the war’s irrefutable patterns: the deliberate targeting of civilians by President Bashar al-Assad’s military, in this case with a weapon that is impossible to use precisely.

Syrians on both sides in this fight have suffered from the bloodshed and sectarian furies given dark license by the war. The victims of the cluster bomb attacks describe the tactic as collective punishment, a mass reprisal against populations that are with the rebels.

The munitions in question — Soviet-era PTAB-2.5Ms — were designed decades ago by Communist engineers to destroy battlefield formations of Western armored vehicles and tanks. They are ejected in dense bunches from free-falling dispensers dropped from aircraft. The bomblets then scatter and descend nose-down to land and explode almost at once over a wide area, often hundreds of yards across.

Marea stands along an agricultural plain, surrounded for miles by empty fields. Even at night, or in bad weather, it cannot be mistaken for anything but what it is — the densely packed collection of small businesses, offices and homes that together form a town.

Two journalists from The New York Times were traveling toward Marea as the attack occurred and arrived not long after the exploding bomblets had rippled across its neighborhoods.

Blood pooled on the street, including beside a water-collection point at an intersection where Nabhan al-Haji, 18, was killed.

Another victim, Ahmad Najjar Asmail, had been riding a motorcycle when a submunition landed beside him. He was decapitated. Ramy Naser, 15, was also fatally wounded.

The hospital was crowded with patients. Many more were en route to hospitals in Turkey.

The use of cluster munitions is banned by much of the world, although Syria, like the United States, is not party to that international convention. In the detached parlance of military planners, they are also sometimes referred to as area weapons — ordnance with effects that cover a sprawling amount of ground.

In the attack on Marea, at least three dispensers, each containing 42 bomblets slightly smaller than a one-liter bottle and packed with a high-explosive shaped charge, were dropped squarely onto neighborhoods and homes.

Two funerals began as the sun set, the latest in a town that rose early against Syria’s government, and has been one of the seats of defiance.

One homeowner, Ali Farouh, showed the place where a PTAB-2.5M struck an exterior wall on his patio. His young son held up bits of shrapnel.

“Bashar is a horse,” Mr. Farouh said, almost spitting with disgust as he said the president’s name. “He is a donkey.”

An examination of the area by daylight found the signature signs of an air-delivered cluster munitions attack, including unexploded PTAB-2.5M submunitions, the tail sections and fins of three dispensers and three main dispenser bodies.

One resident also displayed the nearly intact remains of an ATK-EB mechanical time fuse associated with the same dispensers. Fragments of the submunitions’ fins were in abundance. An interior spacer and dispenser nose plate were also found.

Throughout the town, many of the narrow, telltale craters made by shaped charges could be seen. Some cut deep holes through asphalt into the dirt below, almost like a drill.

It was not immediately clear why Marea was attacked, although many residents ascribed motives that mix collective punishment with revenge.

The town is the home of Abdulkader al-Saleh, a prominent rebel field commander in the Aleppo region. Mr. Saleh, charismatic and lean, is locally known with near reverence as Haji Marea, and is celebrated by his townspeople for his mix of battlefield savvy, courage and luck. This month, just days before the cluster attack on his hometown, he was named a leader in the reorganized Free Syrian Army, as many rebels call themselves.

Residents said Marea’s recent history, and its indelible connection to the commander it produced, has earned it a high place on Mr. Assad’s list of targets.

“The regime especially hates us,” said Yasser al-Haji, an activist who lost a cousin in the attack.

No one disputes that Marea has repeatedly been attacked by some of the Assad government’s most frightening weapons. On Thursday, residents reported being hit by cruise missiles, perhaps Scuds, which they said landed just north of the town with tremendous, earth-heaving explosions.

In the case of the cluster munitions attack, one of the submunitions did strike a building being used by the rebels — a school where some of Haji Marea’s fighters are based. It blasted a small hole in the concrete roof and sprayed bits of concrete and shrapnel into the room below, which was empty.

Several fighters, who were meeting in the next room as the jet screamed overhead — and the sole bomblet, out of more than 100, hit their building — chuckled at their near miss. But they were enraged by the attack.

They spoke of the government’s escalation of weapons throughout the year — from mortars, tanks and artillery to helicopter gunships, then to fixed-wing attack jets. Since summer, Mr. Assad’s military has used cluster munitions repeatedly, and recently began using incendiary cluster munitions, too. This month, Syrian activists and officials in Washington said the government had ratcheted up the pressure with one of the last unused weapons left in its stock — cruise missiles, with conventional warheads. Analysts who have watched the gradual escalations said the Assad government has followed a “boil-the-frog-slowly” strategy.

With the incremental escalations, they say, Mr. Assad has prevented the West from finding cause to enter the war, as NATO did against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya after he rolled out almost all of his military’s full might at the war’s outset.

One fighter, who gave his name as Mustafa, said that Mr. Assad had little left that he had not used. The fighter said he expected no restraint.

“In the coming days, he’ll use the chemicals and he’ll destroy everything,” he said. “And will burn the people, and kill all the people — children, women, old men, the elders.”

Mr. Assad, Mustafa said, “just needs to kill.”

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Inquiry Into Libya Attack Is Sharply Critical of State Department

The investigation into the attacks on the diplomatic mission and C.I.A. annex that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from officials at the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards and safety upgrades to the diplomatic mission.

The panel also blamed the State Department for waiting for specific warnings of imminent attacks to act rather than adapting security procedures and protocols to a deteriorating security environment. By this spring, Benghazi, a hotbed of militant activity in eastern Libya, had experienced a string of assassinations and attacks, including one on a British envoy’s motorcade.

Finally, the report also blamed two major State Department bureaus — diplomatic security and Near Eastern affairs — for failing to coordinate and plan adequate security at the mission. The panel also determined that a number of officials had shown poor leadership.

In response to the panel’s findings, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter to Congress that she was accepting all 29 of the panel’s recommendations, several of which are classified.

Mrs. Clinton is taking specific steps to correct the problems, according to officials. They say the State Department is asking permission from Congress to transfer $1.3 billion from funds that had been allocated for spending in Iraq. This includes $553 million for additional Marine security guards; $130 million for diplomatic security personnel; and $691 million for improving security at installations abroad.

On Monday, an independent panel that was established to investigate the attack presented the report to the State Department. The panel, called an accountability review board, is led by Thomas R. Pickering, a veteran diplomat. It includes four other members, among them Mike Mullen, the retired admiral who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The board is authorized by a 1986 law intended to strengthen security at United States diplomatic missions.

The State Department sent a lengthy classified version of the report to Congress on Tuesday. Mr. Pickering and Admiral Mullen are scheduled to meet with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee in closed session on Wednesday.

On Thursday, William J. Burns and Thomas R. Nides, both deputy secretaries of state, will testify to both panels. Mrs. Clinton, who is still recovering from a concussion she suffered last week after fainting while sick from a stomach flu, is at home this week. The head of the House panel, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, however, has made clear that she planned to ask Mrs. Clinton to testify at a future time.

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