In attempting to understand the attackers in Benghazi, one might, as the Romans taught us to do in such situations, seek to answer a simple question: Cui Bono---"as a benefit to whom?"

They attacked a "...half-baked operation...not a consulate....a 'facility' with an ambiguous purpose....", and that "ambiguous purpose' seems to have been an operation that could be dubbed "Fast and Furious in The Maghreb."

Overtly, the "consulate" and associated Annex were gathering up the widely-distributed elements of the arsenal looted during the "...war in a place where we had no major interests, against a regime that posed no danger to us, and with a policy that neither defined our objectives nor gave any thought to what would happen if we 'succeeded.'"

Covertly, 'F&FITM" seems to have been transferring at least some of these arms to "...Syrian Islamist forces aligned with al-Qaeda, (using a) Turkish (connection)...."

If that, in fact, was the case, then how could an attack on it, causing its destruction, benefit the Islamist forces aligned with al-Qaeda who populate Benghazi and who were, purportedly, behind the attack?

Think about it: The "consulate" was supposed to have been attacked by the same Sunni Islamists in Benghazi who were delivering weapons to the "F&FITM" operation, run out of that "consulate,' that was, in turn, delivering these weapons to the Sunni allies of the Benghazi Islamists who were trying to bring down Shiite-connected Alawite regime in Syria.

If that sounds oxymoronic, well, it is of a piece with every other bit of "information" coming out regarding the entire fiasco.

We know that the embassy in Tripoli  "...advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that an Islamic terrorist group had claimed credit for the attack...."

However, Team Obama has not "officially" rejected its still-obtaining "official" position that it was, as described by the inimitable Mark Steyn, a "...movie review that just got a little out of hand...."

In a post cited above, our increasingly-invaluable source, the DiploMad, suggests that the attack might have been a false-flag one:

If we were "walking" guns to the Syrian rebels, might the attack not have been instigated by the Syrian regime or its Iranian allies?

AT contributor Reza Kahlili also made an Iranian connection on a recent interview on John Batchelor's show (beginning at about 19:00).

Or it could have been a false-flag operation by remnants of the Gadhafi regime, for Kahlili earlier made the connection between that regime and the Mullahs of Tehran.

It is extremely unlikely that we will ever know more than a fraction of any aspect of this disgraceful episode, but, to every bit of information that appears, pose the question: Cui bono?

And, figuratively, pose that question both to the teller and the tale.