Eli Lake: “In the days following the killing of the U.S. ambassador and two ex-Navy SEALs, President Obama and top State Department officials portrayed the attack as a spontaneous reaction to an Internet video depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammad as a lascivious brute…”

“Now there is mounting evidence that the White House’s initial portrayal of the attacks as a mere outgrowth of protest was incorrect — or, at the very least, incomplete. The administration’s story itself has recently begun to shift… telling Congress on Wednesday that the attackers may have had links to al Qaeda and Carney characterizing the incident as a ‘terrorist attack.'”

Four U.S. Army soldiers “killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks,” the AP reports.

“The prosecutor said the militia group had big plans. It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state’s apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia’s goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.”

“An onslaught of bombings and shootings killed 93 people across Iraq on Monday, officials said, in the nation’s deadliest day so far this year,” the AP reports.

“The attacks come days after the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq declared a new offensive and warned in a statement that the militant group is reorganizing in areas from which it retreated before U.S. troops left the country last December. Al-Qaida has been seeking to re-assert its might in the security vacuum left by the departing Americans, seizing on Baghdad’s fragmented government and the surge of Sunni rebels in neighboring Syria to sow instability across Iraq.”

The suicide bomber who blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists this week was reportedly a Swedish citizen who had been held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp from 2002 to 2004, the Times of Israel reports.

“He’s the most dangerous president we have ever had on national security.”

— Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), in an interview with the Daily Beast, claiming President Obama has “revealed the methodologies we use” and has been “purging the FBI files of anything that could be considered anti-Islamic.”

Vice President Joe Biden went off-script with a deeply personal moment with family members of fallen service members. It’s definitely worth watching.

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“Of course, even Jimmy Carter would have given that order.”

— Mitt Romney, quoted by Politico, on whether he would have given the order to go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Bill Clinton cuts a very powerful video extolling President Obama as commander in chief.

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A federal judge refused to order the Obama administration “to release photos and video of the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan almost a year ago and the al Qaeda leader’s burial at sea,” Reuters reports.

Time has a fascinating look at the White House decisionmaking that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. One of the biggest challenges was confirming that the al Qaeda leader was actually at the Abbottabad compound.

“Most of the actions the CIA could take to increase its confidence about the target would also unavoidably increase the odds that bin Laden or Pakistani intelligence officers would learn that the U.S. had discovered his whereabouts. More-advanced drones could provide better overhead photography of activity in the compound, but what if one crashed, as an RQ-170 did in Iran seven months later? A broadsheet of options included everything from surveilling the neighborhood with a miniaturized UAV that resembled a bird (so convincing that one was attacked by an eagle) to analyzing local sewage for genetic markers.”

Jose Rodriguez, who oversaw the CIA’s once-secret interrogation program, says in a new book that he ordered the destruction of videos showing waterboarding because he “was tired of waiting for Washington’s bureaucracy to make a decision that protected American lives,” the AP reports.

He describes sending the order in November 2005 as “just getting rid of some ugly visuals.”

Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban commander in Afghanistan, visited a police checkpoint with a wanted poster bearing his own face and demanded the $100 finder’s fee referenced on the poster, the Washington Post reports.

He was arrested on the spot.

“You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by National Review, on the raid President Obama ordered to kill Osama bin Laden.

David Ignatius reports one of the documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces the night he was killed instructed “special cells” in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.

Said the al Qaeda leader: “The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency… Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour… and killing him would alter the war’s path.”

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 60% of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been not worth fighting and just 30% believe the Afghan public supports the U.S. mission there — “marking the sour state of attitudes on the war even before the shooting rampage allegedly by a U.S. soldier this weekend.”

Indeed 54% say the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan without completing its current effort to train Afghan forces to become self-sufficient.

In a daring nighttime raid, U.S. Navy SEALs rescued two
hostages, including one American, who were being held by kidnappers in
Somalia, MSNBC reports.

The details are reminiscent of the raid that resulted in the death of
Osama bin Laden: “two teams of Navy SEALs landed by helicopter near the
compound where the two hostages were being held. As the SEALS approached
the compound on foot gunfire broke out, the U.S. officials said, and
several of the militants were reportedly killed… The SEALs gathered up
Buchanan and Thisted, loaded them onto the helicopters and flew them to
safety at an undisclosed location. The two hostages were not injured
during the rescue operation and are reported to be in relatively good
condition.”

“The first indication of the rescue operation came
Tuesday night in Washington from President Obama himself. As the
president entered the House chambers to give his State of the Union
Speech, he pointed to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta standing in the
crowd and said, ‘Leon. Good job tonight. Good job tonight.'”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “was stopped by security at the Nashville airport Monday when a scanner set off an alarm and targeted his knee, although the senator said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint,” the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

Paul refused to submit to a pat down by airport security and said he was “detained” at a small cubicle and couldn’t make his flight to Washington for a Senate vote scheduled later in the day.

“A TSA official speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal screening policies said Paul was never detained.”

Gawker reports that Anthony Shaffer “is suing the Pentagon and the CIA over their extraordinary attempts to censor Operation Dark Heart, the book he wrote recounting his days as a military spy in Afghanistan and elsewhere. One problem he’s run into: The government has the original unredacted manuscript he wrote. And it won’t give him a copy. Because it’s classified.”

But he can buy it on eBay.

When the Pentagon discovered the book contained sensitive information, it had already been printed and dozens of review copies sent out. So even though the government bought all 10,000 copies of the book directly from the publisher and destroyed them,  there are still copies floating around.