Posted on 09/17/2012 9:56:05 AM PDT by indpndtguy
CAIRO—Ambassador Chris Stevens was still breathing when Libyans stumbled across him inside a room in the American embassy in Benghazi, pulled him out and drove him to a hospital after last week’s deadly attack in the eastern Libyan city, witnesses told the Associated Press on Monday.
Fahd al-Bakoush, a freelance videographer, was among the Libyan civilians searching through the embassy after gunmen and protesters rampaged through it last Tuesday night. Al-Bakoush said he heard someone call out that he had tripped over a dead body.
A group of people gathered as several men pulled the seemingly lifeless form from the room. They saw he was alive and a foreigner, though no one recognized him as Stevens, al-Bakoush said.
READ MORE: Arrests made in U.S. embassy attack; operation precisely timed by militants: Libyan minister
He was breathing and his eyelids flickered, he said. “I tested his pulse and he was alive,” he said “No doubt. His face was blackened and he was like a paralyzed person.”
Video taken by al-Bakoush and posted on YouTube shows Stevens being carried out of a small dark room through a window with a raised shutter and being laid on the floor. One man touches his neck to feel for a pulse. Some of the men shout, “God is great.”
The video has been authenticated since Stevens’ face is clearly visible and he is wearing the same white t-shirt seen in authenticated photos of him being carried away one another man’s shoulders, presumably moments later. Two colleagues of al-Bakoush who also witnessed the scene confirmed that he took the footage.
READ MORE: Arab Awakening coverage
Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack on the consulate, part of a wave of assaults on U.S. diplomatic missions in Muslim countries over a low-budget movie made in the United States that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad.
The accounts of all three witnesses mesh with that of the doctor who treated Stevens that night. Last week, the doctor told The Associated Press that Stevens was nearly lifeless when he was brought by Libyans, with no other Americans around, to the Benghazi hospital where he worked. He said Stevens had severe asphyxia from the smoke and that he tried to resuscitate him with no success. Only later did security officials confirm it was Stevens.
A freelance photographer who was with al-Bakoush at the scene, Abdel-Qader Fadl, said Stevens was unconscious and “maybe moved his head, but only once.”
Ahmed Shams, a 22-year-old arts student who works with the two, said the group cried out “God is great” in celebration after discovering he wasn’t dead. “We were happy to see him alive. The youth tried to rescue him. But there was no security, no ambulances, nothing to help,” he said.
The men carried Stevens to a private car to drive him to the hospital since there was no ambulance, all three witnesses said.
It’s shocking how gullible they think we are.
How are we going to find out the truth of this?.
Do we really believe that when terrorists ran through this safe house and found a dying American victim of their attack, they rushed to treat him kindly and preserve his life? That they yelled Allah Akbar (holy crap, the iPad auto corrected with caps! They don’t do that with G-d) at his signs of life, and took him to the HOSPITAL? There may be kindly Muslims in the town, but how would they be the first people walking into a terrorist attacked building??
If someone has the means and skills to grab the video and dub Hillary's lame explanation over it I think it would be very effective in puncturing the administration's lying spin on this event.
They do it all the time during, or shortly before, attacks. Do they think we are idiots?
Hmm, remember what Maggie wrote on Sept. 12?
BENGHAZI, Libya – "The U.S. dispatched an elite group of Marines to Tripoli on Wednesday after the mob attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Officials were investigating whether the rampage was a backlash to an anti-Islamic video with ties to Coptic Christians or a plot to coincide with the anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks.The mob attack on Tuesday — the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strike in the U.S. — was initially presumed to have been a spontaneous act triggered by outrage over a movie called “Innocence of Muslims” that mocked Islam’s Prophet Muhammad that was produced in the U.S. and excerpted on YouTube. The amateurish video also drew protests in Cairo, where angry ultraconservatives climbed the U.S. Embassy’s walls, tore down an American flag and replaced it with an Islamic banner.
But a U.S. counterterrorism official said the Benghazi violence was “too co-ordinated or professional” to be spontaneous. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly."
I wish we had a media that could be trusted to sort this out and get to the bottom of it.
I’ve seen very little of the videos. What I’ve seen and read described could possibly fit this narrative, to a point.
I think it is possible that some on our side could misinterpret some of what we see. I think it is likely the other side is playing fast and loose with the truth.
But there could be some of both. It is quite possible that some arabs friendly to the united states came into the embassy, found his body, were happy he was alive, and drove him to the hospital.
It is likely that protestors, seeing his body drug out a window, would cheer because he was a victim.
It is possible he was sodomozed while he was in the embassy, or it is possible that story is not true.
(Not an embassy, I know). But what is clear is that our sovereign territory was overrun by our enemies, and the administration had no idea where their own ambassador was for hours. This is a failure of the highest order.
To the degree we get into arguments over whether the body was mistreated or abused, or whether people were shouting for or against us, we are distracted from making the important points.
Romney tried to make that point on the first night, and the media went into full-attack mode to squelch it. We need to focus on the simple truths and not allow ourselves to be further taken off-message:
Obama has a polyanish world-view that was just shattered by reality, where everybody loves us now, and we don’t need to worry about “terrorists”.
Obama has been bragging about his “success” in killing Osama, and bragging about the terror threat being over, and this no doubt has encouraged our enemies to prove him wrong.
Obama failed to provide adequate security at our facilities throughout the muslim world, probably because of his failure to understand the empathy the muslim world has for our country and our freedoms.
Obama failed to protect our people, to the point where they LOST our ambassador for hours. If they had kept track of where he was, they would have known he was in that compound, and could have sent marines in to get him, and he probably would have gotten much better medical treatment and survived.
Frankly, that is the totally unreported story: Obama had NO IDEA where the ambassador was, so they didn’t know to go rescue him from this building. We now know he was not killed in the attack, and was instead slowly dying of damage from smoke inhalation. That is treatable in many cases; if we knew where he was, we could have saved him. Obama’s failure cost him his life.
Obama focused on the wrong things. Our Egyption embassy releasing an overblown denunciation of some crackpot youtube video was an excellent EXAMPLE of this, as was Hillary’s official US pronunciation against the same video. This is not government’s job. While they went after a you-tube video, people were dying. There were three attacks in Afghanistan, in addition to all the rioting at our embasssies.
And far from acknowleding failure, the adminstration bizarrely announced that the violence was NOT spilling over into Afghanistan, even while our main compound was breached, and another terrorist given free access to our inner workings turned on us and killed peopole.
This last thing is because of another Obama failure — the acceleration of the timetable for leaving Afghanistan, which forced them to stop doing adequate security screenings. SO now we have terrorist infiltrators given weapons and access, working side-by-side with our troops, and then killing them.
The media won’t report any of this. We don’t see daily body counts from the “lost war in Afghanistan”. We don’t see the list of real failures. We need to push it, which means not getting distracted by other less important things such as who was yelling what when our dying ambassador was left to fend for himself by this administration.
I wanted to believe the video is showing locals trying to help the Ambassador.
Now I clearly see in video that his belt is fastened. Later in picture his belt is undone. Our US Ambassador raped, I’m thinking no doubt.
Should be a caveat here.
That is the Toronto Red Star. A far left neo-marxist “news” paper.
I love a good fairy tale.
This just doesn’t compute. How much did Hussein & Hillary pay these guys to tell this improbable story?
Friendly bystanders just HAPPENED to be strolling by in the midst of a terrorist attack on the safe house, and the terrorists just happily stood by while they pulled him out and rescued him?
A likely story.
The article says he was ‘carried’ through the window. I saw the video last night and he was PULLED BY HIS FEET out the window. He wasn’t ‘placed on the floor’, as in tenderly, gingerly... he was dropped on the GROUND. They were yelling with joy that he was dead, as in mission acccomplished, that’s what I saw any way. I didn’t see them pick him up, as to take him to a hospital, video ended with the celebratory yelling. I would imagine carrying him up in the air as they did was definitely as a trophy, not in a way to save his life and no doubt he was dead when they did that. Just sickening, his blood is ALL over Obama & Hillary’s hands.
They took the scenic route.
here’s the video, no carrying him through the streets shown in this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMSnyOMRXos
That's why Bambi and Biden had nothing scheduled for the weekend. They all had to sit down to get their lies straight, and put together their talking points.
not in this video, it ends with the celebratory howling that he’s dead IMO...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMSnyOMRXos
CharlesWayneCT~” Obama had NO IDEA where the ambassador was, so they didn’t know to go rescue him from this building. We now know he was not killed in the attack, and was instead slowly dying of damage from smoke inhalation. That is treatable in many cases; if we knew where he was, we could have saved him. Obama’s failure cost him his life.”
The crux of the situation is ..that Obama needed his sleep, and went to bed.
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