Citizens Committee on Benghazi claims the US government allowed arms to flow to al-Qaeda-linked militants who opposed Muammar Gaddafi Their rise to power, the group says, led to the Benghazi attack in 2012 The group claims the strongman Gaddafi offered to abdicate his presidency, but the US refused to broker his peaceful exit The commission, part of the center-right Accuracy In Media group, concluded that the Benghazi attack was a failed kidnapping plot US Ambassador Chris Stevens was to be captured and traded for 'blind sheikh' Omar Abdel-Rahman, who hatched the 1993 WTC bombing plot The Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn't been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier. 'The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,' Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline. She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants. 'Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,' Lopez claimed. 'They were permitted to come in. ... [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed.. 'The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.' The weapons were intended for Gaddafi but allowed by the U.S. to flow to his Islamist opposition.
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