Islamic terrorists murdered the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans during an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11.  President Obama, promising "to bring to justice the killers," dispatched the FBI to investigate.

Why did he send the FBI rather than the 82^nd Airborne or Navy SEALs?  Inquiring minds like Late Show host David Letterman want to know.

After determining Obama's weight and that he's feeling "great," even though Muslims are attacking our embassies around the world, Letterman on Sept. 19 asked Obama if the Benghazi attack was "an act of war[.  A]re we at war now?"

"No," Obama assured him.

He told Letterman that there is this "shadowy character" who made a highly offensive video mocking Mohammed, which highly offended highly sensitive "extremists and terrorists."  They used it as an excuse, according to Obama, to attack the consulate, but "they do not represent what the Libyan people think."  Obama said he is going to make Muslim countries understand that they have to protect our people.

Consider it the soft side of soft-headed diplomacy.  We know it works -- just ask Iran.

In case you missed it, the State Department declared victory some time ago.  According to Michael Hirsh, writing for the National Journal on April 23:

"The war on terror is over," one senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues told me. "Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism."

Hirsh updated his column the next day because "White House spokesman Tommy Vietor clarified that while the 'war on terror' concept has been dropped, 'we absolutely have never said our war against al Qaida is over. We are prosecuting that war at an unprecedented pace.'"

You might get a migraine, but let's review:

• According to the State Department, the "war on terror is over" because we've "killed most of al Qaeda."
• According to the White House, we're prosecuting "our war against al Qaida," but it's not a "war on terror."
• According to Obama, we're not at war.

You get the feeling that the left hand at Foggy Bottom doesn't know what the left hand on Pennsylvania Avenue is doing.  It's why Obama prefers explaining it to Letterman rather than Charles Krauthammer.  But then, if Obama had opted for the latter, we'd be left guessing his weight.

Obama's "we ain't gonna learn war no more" theory was undercut by testimony of Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Sept. 19.  Olsen admitted the possibility of al-Qaeda involvement:

We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda's affiliates, in particular Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Apparently, Olsen hasn't heard that al-Qaeda is mostly dead.  Neither has al-Qaeda.

Because of Obama's it's a crime, not a war doctrine approach, the burned-out, bloody consulate is a crime scene -- an unsecured crime scene with lost and contaminated evidence because it wasn't secured by our Keystone Cops at Hillary Clinton's State Department.

According to CNN, three days after the attack, CNN reporters walking through the unsecured consulate walked out with the journal of our murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens, who wrote about his concerns over the lack of security at the consulate.

For CNN, the ambassador's writings served as tips about the situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. CNN took the newsworthy tips and corroborated them with other sources.

A source familiar with Stevens' thinking told CNN earlier this week that, in the months leading up to his death, the late ambassador worried about what he called the security threats in Benghazi and a rise in Islamic extremism.

CNN says it returned the journal to Stevens' family.  You can see how well-established the evidence chain of custody is working for the FBI.

Other sensitive documents reportedly are missing from the Benghazi compound.

According to Obama's official White House statement released Sept. 12: "Libyans helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens's [sic] body to the hospital, where we tragically learned that he had died."

Thus far, the administration hasn't released anything to support Obama's statement.  But videos taken inside the consulate immediately after the attack reveal a mob dragging out Stevens' dead body on the ground.

With a million-to-one chance that anybody is ever charged for the attack on the consulate, the defense attorneys will salivate over the prospect of introducing Obama's statement praising Libyans as rescuers who carried the ambassador to the hospital.

Obama's "overseas contingency operation" has been reaffirmed by the crime commissioner in chief.  Attacking America on our soil isn't an act of war.

Obama, the self-proclaimed "constitutional scholar," assured the Arab world in Cairo in 2009 that he ended torture.  He has also ended Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of accused perpetrators of "crime" who are supposed to enjoy due process before he has them officially whacked.

The New York Times called it Obama's "kill list," from which he personally selects those "extremists and terrorists" on the receiving end of drone-fired missiles sans Miranda warnings and legal counsel.

With the "crime" scene contaminated in Benghazi, the drones are probably painting a target on some random Islamists about to be added to the "kill list."

If Obama actually thinks that a laughably bad movie trailer is an excuse to set off attacks against American embassies across the globe, you would think that he would have been sufficiently prescient not to have given insider access to a major Hollywood production company documenting how Obama killed Osama.

The message from around the world is, "Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas!"

It appears they've identified the "shadowy character" for themselves.

Jan LaRue is senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.