Benghazi | featured news

A Republican-led House oversight committee opens hearings Wednesday on diplomatic security in Benghazi, where a U.S. ambassador and three others were killed on Sept. 11, adding fuel to a political debate over the issue in the final weeks before presidential elections... GOP lawmakers deny they are trying to embarrass the Obama administration before the election.

Libya’s prime minister-elect failed a confidence vote by an overwhelming margin on Sunday, removing him from office and throwing the country into yet more political uncertainty as time ticks on an investigation into attacks that killed four Americans last month.

U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon have begun assembling preliminary information about potential targets and militant personnel in Libya that could be struck if President Barack Obama ordered such action.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday vowed to pursue a full accounting of the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi "wherever that leads," but cautioned that it could take time for a complete picture to emerge.

The detailed information being prepared could be used to kill or capture some of the militants suspected in the deadly attack on the American mission in Benghazi.

Leaders of a House committee said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats in Libya made repeated requests for increased security for the consulate in Benghazi and were turned down by officials in Washington.

The presidential campaigns and their allies began the week with aggressive attacks on the candidates’ records ahead of the first presidential debate on Wednesday. In an opinion article published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, Mitt Romney accused President Obama of foreign policy failures, saying that the president had allowed the nation’s influence to atrophy by “stepping away” from American allies overseas.

Hundreds of Libyans converged Saturday on a main square in Benghazi and another in Tripoli in response to a call from the military to hand over their weapons, some driving in with armored personnel carriers, tanks, vehicles with mounted anti-aircraft guns and hundreds of rocket launchers.

The White House Thursday accused Republicans of using the deaths of four Americans in Libya for political gain as questions mount about the administration's evolving account of the attack. White House spokesman Jay Carney hit back in a row sparked by complaints by presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans that top officials have been unwilling to categorize the killings as terrorism.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that an affiliate of Al Qaeda in North Africa was behind the attack on the United States mission in Benghazi that killed four Americans.