"There are so many answers we don't know," McCain told host David Gregory. "We've had two movies about getting bin Laden and we don't even know who the people were who were evacuated from the consulate the day after the (Benghazi) attack. So there are many, many questions. So we've had a massive cover-up on the part of the administration."

Gregory then pressed McCain on what the Arizona senator meant by "a massive cover-up."

"I'm asking you, do you care whether four Americans died?" McCain said. "And shouldn't people be held accountable for the fact that four Americans died?"

"Well, what you said was the cover-up--a cover-up of what?" Gregory asked.

"Of the information concerning the deaths of four brave Americans," McCain replied. "The information has not been forthcoming. You obviously believe that it has. I know that it hasn't. And I'll be glad to send you a list of the questions that have not been answered, including 'What did the president do and who did he talk to the night of the attack on Benghazi?'"

Most people don't bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration. That was an act of terror, and for anyone to disagree with that fundamental fact I think is really ignoring the facts. Now, how long it was planned and who was involved, but there is no doubt there was extremists and there's no doubt they were using heavy weapons and they used pretty good tactics--indirect fire, direct fire, and obviously they were successful.

After that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that-- in that effort with heavy weapons (...) It's clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we'll have to determine.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But would you also need some sort of ground forces in the area —
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: No.
JUDY WOODRUFF: — because Assad’s forces are operating very much in the middle of the civilian population.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: We would not.
Putting U.S. ground forces in would be not only not appropriate, but counterproductive. We just need to arm and equip these people, the same way that we did in Libya.

Wolf, even in Libya, we did not take the very exceptional decision to arm the opposition. And in Syria, we know much, much less about the nature of this opposition. It’s not coherent….
So to argue that we ought to be arming the opposition is a very consequential statement. And I don’t think that those that are advocating that have fully thought through the consequences.

"to get an on-the-ground assessment of the situation" and to meet with opposition leaders and members of the rebel military.

"They are my heroes," McCain said of the rebels as he walked out of a local hotel in Benghazi. (snip) Details of the trip were shrouded in secrecy due to heightened security in a country fiercely divided by the two-month-old anti-Qaddafi rebellion.

“We were aware that Sen. McCain would be making the trip and State supported the codel,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told TPM in an e-mail Friday afternoon.

When asked whether McCain was there as an official emissary for the State Department or White House, Carney told reporters earlier only: “No. No that I’m aware of.”

In the video, the beheading victim can be seen suspended upside down in front of a burnt-out building. A crowd of hundreds is gathered around to watch; many of the spectators are filming the proceedings on mobile phones.

One minute and twenty seconds into the CNN report, McCain is seen walking past the building where the beheading took place, accompanied by Abdul Hafez Ghoga, vice-chairman of the Libyan rebels’ National Transitional Council.

Members of the group walking with McCain wave American flags, and shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” ring out as a smiling McCain walks by the site of the beheading.

March, 2011, shortly after NATO began bombing Libya, journalists the world over were warning that the so-called "pro-democracy" protesters the West was purportedly protecting were in fact notorious extremist groups with a 30 year history of terrorism in Libya and abroad. Dr. Webster Tarpley provided documented evidence collected from the US Army's own West Point study, indicating the the epicenter of the so-called "revolution," was in fact the global epicenter of Al Qaeda recruitment. It would be in this epicenter that John McCain would give his speech, and where Ambassador Stevens would later be killed.

In a diplomatic cable in June, the U.S. ambassador to Libya cited the rise of “Islamic extremism” and displays of “the Al-Qaeda flag” over buildings outside the city of Benghazi, where he and three other Americans would be killed in a terrorist attack on Sept. 11.
The previously classified cable is among 166 documents made public Friday by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who says they expose an egregious security shortage at U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya in the months before the attack.