My must read of the day is "Why Delta Force Waited So Long to Grab a Benghazi Ringleader," in the Daily Beast:
The mission to capture Ahmed abu Khatallah, one of the ringleaders of the September 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, was more than a year in the making.
In the months leading up to the raid, teams from the Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, or Delta Force, practiced the extradition on a mock up of abu Khatallah’s compound at Fort Bragg, according to a U.S. military contractor familiar with the planning for the mission. Eventually, it was a Delta Team with embedded FBI agents on Sunday that snagged the man wanted for the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. [...]
A senior administration official told the Daily Beast that the delay in apprehending the suspect was due in part to requests from the Justice Department to gather appropriate evidence to prosecute him in criminal court.
This is an incredibly important question of the Benghazi arrest. You can be pleased with the capture, because better late than never, and still be unhappy with the delay. Khatallah is not a new suspect and the explanation for his belated apprehension is still incomplete.
It is ridiculous that it took nearly two years to capture this man when, by his own account, he wasn't hiding.
If there was a tactical reason for the delay, and there very well may be, I want to know specifically what it was. "We were getting our ducks in a row" is not an acceptable excuse—and that's what this senior official seems to be suggesting. This was a high priority case, and unless our Justice Department is completely incompetent and incapable of doing their most basic job, we could have gotten the appropriate evidence faster than this.