Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for September 13/12
Al Zawahri personally ordered Al Qaeda to murder US Ambassador Stevens
Obama vows to track down ambassador's killers, tightens security
Libya attack may have been planned and organized, US officials say
Slain US ambassador Stevens remembered for courage, humility as an envoy to the Arab world
U.N. nuclear agency board set to rebuke Iran: diplomats
Hollande: Diplomatic solution needed for Iran
Failed policy: Iran threats help Bibi, Barak
Canada calls deadly Libyan consular attack "senseless," calls for swift justice
US officials: 2 warships moving toward Libya
Report: US strikes on Iran would risk major war
Lieberman: Abbas on borrowed time
CA man confirms role in anti-Islam film
Anti-Islam film crew: We were misled
Extremist Islam: European appeasement
Pope seen as sending message to Christians: Don’t abandon homeland
Pope to call for end to arming both sides of Syria conflict: Rai
Beirut airport to halt flights during pope’s arrival, departure
Al-Qaeda leader urges support for ousting Assad
Ex-Lebanese minister to head U.N. Support Mission in Libya
PM to propose review of politicians’ salary hikes
Charbel upbeat about solution for hostages
Audio recordings from Samaha car enough to summon Sayyed: source
Hariri says Hezbollah sending fighters to Syria
Lebanon’s religious leaders slam anti-Islam film
Blast in northern Syria targets troops
Hariri Expects Action from Hollande, Accuses Hizbullah of Sending Fighters to Hizbullah
EU offers Egypt's Morsi $1.29 bln aid, better trade
U.S. embassies attacked in Yemen, Egypt after Libya envoy killed
Peace envoy in Syria as violence rages
Egyptian envoy says open to dialogue with Hezbollah
U.S. Hostage Appeals for Netanyahu's Help

Al Zawahri personally ordered Al Qaeda to murder US Ambassador Stevens
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 12, 2012/The US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three staff members at the US consulate in Benghazi were deliberately murdered Tuesday night Sept 11 just after memorial ceremonies were held in America for the victims of the 9/11 outrage. debkafile’s counter-terror sources report exclusively that far from being a spontaneous raid by angry Islamists, it was a professionally executed terrorist operation by a professional Al Qaeda assassination team, whose 20 members acted under the orders of their leader Ayman al Zawahri after special training. They were all Libyans, freed last year from prisons where they were serving sentences for terrorism passed during the late Muammar Qaddafi’s rule.
In a video tape released a few hours before the attack, Zawahri called on the faithful to take revenge on the United States for liquidating one of the organization’s top operatives, Libyan-born Abu Yahya al-Libi in June by a US drone in northwestern Pakistan.
Its release was the “go” signal for the hit team to attack the US diplomats in Benghazi.
To mask their mission, they stormed the consulate on the back of a violent protest by hundreds of Islamists against a film said to insult Prophet Muhammed produced by a Florida real estate agent called Sam Bacile, who has been described as of Israeli origin.
The operation is rated by terror experts as the most ambitious outrage al Qaeda has pulled off in the last decade. According to our sources, the gunmen split into two groups of 10 each and struck in two stages:
1. They first fired rockets at the consulate building on the assumption that the ambassador’s bodyguards would grab him, race him out of the building and drive him to a safe place under the protection of the US secret service;
2. The second group was able to identify the getaway vehicle and the ambassador’s armed escort and lay in wait to ambush them. The gunmen then closed in and killed the ambassador and his bodyguards at point blank range.
debkafile’s intelligence sources report that the investigation launched by US counter-terror and clandestine services is focusing on finding out why no clue was picked up of the coming attack by any intelligence body and how al Qaeda’s preparations for the attack which took place inside Libya went unnoticed by any surveillance authority.

Obama vows to track down ambassador's killers, tightens security
By Matt Spetalnick and Hadeel Al Shalchi
WASHINGTON/BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - President Barack Obama branded the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans as "outrageous" on Wednesday and vowed to track down the perpetrators, while ordering a tightening of diplomatic security worldwide. The ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and the other Americans died after Islamist gunmen attacked the U.S. consulate and a safe house refuge in Benghazi on Tuesday night. The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad.
The violence in the eastern city, a cradle of Libya's U.S.-backed uprising against Muammar Gaddafi last year, came on the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Another assault was mounted on the U.S. embassy in Cairo in which protesters, who included Islamists and teenage soccer fans, tore down and burned a U.S. flag.
Stevens, 52, became the first U.S. ambassador killed in such an attack since Adolph Dubs, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, died in a kidnapping attempt in 1979.
U.S. government officials said the Benghazi attack may have been planned in advance and there were indications that members of a militant faction calling itself Ansar al Sharia - which translates as Supporters of Islamic Law - may have been involved.
They also said some reporting from the region suggested that members of Al-Qaeda's north Africa-based affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.
"It bears the hallmarks of an organized attack," one U.S. official said. However, some U.S. officials cautioned against assuming that the attacks were deliberately organized to coincide with the September 11 anniversary. Security personnel were separated from Stevens during the attack, U.S. officials said, describing a chaotic scene of smoke, gunfire and confusion.
A U.S. official said Washington had ordered the evacuation of all U.S. personnel from Benghazi to Tripoli and was reducing staffing in the capital to emergency levels.
The U.S. military is moving two Navy destroyers toward the Libyan coast, giving the Obama administration flexibility for any future action against Libyan targets, according to a U.S. official. The military also is dispatching a Marine Corps anti-terrorist security team to boost security in Libya. The violence in Benghazi and Cairo threatened to spread to other Muslim countries.
Police fired teargas at angry demonstrators outside the U.S. embassy in Tunisia and several hundred people gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Sudan. In Morocco, a few dozen protesters burned American flags and chanted slogans near the U.S. consulate in Casablanca. Obama said the world must unite against such "brutal acts" as the assault in Libya.
"The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack," he said, while insisting it would not threaten relations with Libya's new government. "... And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people."
Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief apologized to the United States over an attack.
U.S. SECURITY STEPPED UP WORLDWIDE
Obama said he had ordered an increase in security at U.S. diplomatic posts around the globe. The attacks could alter U.S. attitudes towards the wave of revolutions across the Arab world that toppled secularist authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and brought Islamists to power. The violence also could have an impact on the closely contested U.S. presidential race ahead of the November 6 election. Republican Mitt Romney, Obama's challenger, criticized the president's response to the crisis. He said the timing of a statement from the U.S. embassy in Cairo denouncing "efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims" made Obama look weak as protesters were attacking U.S. missions.
Romney said it was "disgraceful" to be seen to be apologizing for American values of free speech. Obama's campaign accused Romney of trying to score political points at a time of national tragedy. Obama said Romney has a tendency "to shoot first and aim later." Libyan Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif said Stevens and another diplomat died as a result of the consulate attack, while the other Americans died in what a Libyan military officer called an intense and highly accurate mortar attack on the safe house.
Ziad Abu Zaid, the duty doctor in the emergency room at Benghazi Medical Centre on Tuesday, said he had treated Stevens.
"He came in a state of cardiac arrest. I performed CPR for 45 minutes, but he died of asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation." U.S. officials said Stevens, information technology specialist Sean Smith and one security officer were trapped under fire in the burning consulate building. The security officer made it outside and returned with help to search for the diplomats, officials said. The searchers found Smith, who was already dead, but were unable to find Stevens amid repeated exchanges of gunfire between Libyan security forces and the attackers over the next several hours.
"At some point in all of this ... we believe that Ambassador Stevens got out of the building and was taken to a hospital in Benghazi. We do not have any information on what his condition was at that time," a senior U.S. official said. Stevens' body was later returned to U.S. custody at Benghazi airport, the official said.
Images of Stevens, purportedly taken after he died, circulated on the Internet. One image showed him being carried, with a white shirt pulled up and a cut on his forehead.
Two more Americans died when a squad of U.S. troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue the diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack, said Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, commander of a Libyan special operations unit ordered to meet the Americans.
"It was supposed to be a secret place and we were surprised the armed groups knew about it," Sharif said of the safe house.
Western countries denounced the Benghazi killings and Russia expressed deep concern, saying the episode underscored the need for global cooperation to fight "the evil of terrorism."
The attack raised questions about the future U.S. diplomatic presence in Libya, relations between Washington and Tripoli, and the unstable security situation after Gaddafi's overthrow.
Witnesses said the mob at the consulate included tribesmen, militia and other gunmen. Hamam, a 17-year-old who took part in the attack, said Ansar al-Sharia cars arrived at the start of the protest but left once fighting started.
"The protesters were running around the compound just looking for Americans, they just wanted to find an American so they could catch one," he said.
'WE STARTED SHOOTING AT THEM'
"We started shooting at them, and then some other people also threw hand-made bombs over the fences and started the fires in the buildings," he said.
"There was some Libyan security for the embassy outside but when the hand-made bombs went off they ran off and left."
Hamam said he saw an American die in front of him in the mayhem that ensued. He said the body was covered in ash.
Clips of the "Innocence of Muslims," the film that stirred the deadly attacks, had been circulating on the Internet for weeks before protests erupted. They show an amateurish production portraying the Prophet Mohammad as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterizations have in the past provoked protests all over the Muslim world.
U.S. media said the film was produced by an Israeli-American property developer. Internet links indicated it was by Sam Bacile, a name that could have Egyptian origins. But Reuters could not independently confirm his responsibility for the film, or even that Bacile was his real name.
Egypt's Coptic Orthodox church issued a statement condemning some Copts - Egyptian Christians - living aboard who it said had financed "the production of a film insulting Prophet Mohammad," while a U.S.-based Egyptian Christian who said he promoted the film said he was sorry that U.S. diplomats had been killed.
Morris Sadek, speaking to Reuters by phone from the United States, said his objective was to highlight discrimination against Christians who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 83 million people.
He said Sam Bacile was the writer and director and described him as an "American."
Many Muslim states focused their condemnation on the film and will be concerned about preventing a repeat of the fallout seen after publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. This touched off riots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2006 in which at least 50 people died.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the making of the movie a "devilish act" but said he was certain those involved in its production were a very small minority.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul appealed to Afghan leaders for help in "maintaining calm" and Afghanistan shut down the YouTube site so Afghans would not be able to see the film.
General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, took the unusual step of telephoning a radical Florida Christian pastor, Terry Jones, and asking him to withdraw his support for the film. Earlier provocative acts by Jones, like publicly burning a Koran, had sparked Muslim unrest.
In Egypt, Prime Minister Hisham Kandil called on Washington to act against the film's makers for stirring up strife but condemned the violence.
'SMALL AND SAVAGE GROUP'
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the attack was the work of a "small and savage group."
U.S. ambassadors in such volatile countries as Libya have tight security, usually travelling in well-protected convoys. Diplomatic missions are normally protected by Marines or other special forces.
Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya's Supreme Security Committee, said Libyan security forces came under heavy fire and "were not prepared for the intensity of the attack."
Security experts say the area around Benghazi is host to a number of Islamist militant groups who oppose any Western presence in Muslim countries.
(Additional reporting by Samia Nakhoul in Beirut, Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Tripoli, Hadeel Al Shalchi in Tripoli, Sarah N. Lynch, Arshad Mohammed, Andrew Quinn, Matt Spetalnick, Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball in Washington, and Reuters reporters in Cairo and Benghazi; Writing by David Brunnstrom and Peter Millership)
 

Western countries denounced on Wednesday the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya
(Reuters) - Western countries denounced on Wednesday the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff by armed attackers, while many Muslim states focused their condemnation on the anti-Islamic film that provoked the violence.
In Libya and Egypt, where the U.S. embassy was also attacked on Tuesday, authorities promised to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the other staff were killed in an assault on the U.S. consulate and a safe house in Benghazi by Islamist gunmen. The attackers blamed Washington for a low-budget anti-Islam film produced in the United States, excerpts of which could be viewed on the Internet.
Western leaders expressed unanimous shock at killings that France's President Francois Hollande called an "odious crime".
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said: "Nothing can justify violence". Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti praised the Libyan government for speaking out against the violence.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said: "We decisively condemn all attacks on foreign diplomatic representations and their employees as manifestations of terrorism that can have no justification."
At the United Nations, Under-secretary General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told the Security Council at a briefing: "The United Nations rejects defamation of religion in all forms, but there is no justification for violence such as occurred in Benghazi."
Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagour joined the condemnation of the killings. "I do condemn the cowardly act of attacking the U.S. consulate and the killing of Mr. Stevens and the other diplomats," he said in a message on Twitter.
The U.S. military helped Libya's government come to power as part of a NATO bombing campaign that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi last year.
In Egypt - where protesters scaled the U.S. embassy's walls and tore down the American flag - the government of new President Mohammed Mursi also condemned the violence but called on Washington to take action against the film's makers.
"What happened at the U.S. embassy in Cairo is regrettable and rejected by all Egyptian people and cannot be justified, especially if we consider that the people who produced this low film have no relation to the (U.S.) government," Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said, reading out a statement.
"We ask the American government to take a firm position toward this film's producers within the framework of international charters that criminalize acts that stir strife on the basis of race, color or religion."
President Mursi, an Islamist from the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, became Egypt's first elected leader this year after last year's overthrow of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. He is trying to reassure Western countries that Egypt will remain an ally and is seeking debt forgiveness from Washington.
The Brotherhood called for a nationwide peaceful protest on Friday against the film, "to condemn insults to religious convictions and insults to the Prophet". Mursi withdrew from the Brotherhood before taking office.
MUSLIMS DENOUNCE FILM
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, the official response often focused mainly on the anti-Muslim video, rather than on the violence it triggered.
Several leaders, including Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, who is defended by a NATO-led force of 113,000 troops including nearly 75,000 Americans, denounced the film in statements that made no mention of attacks on U.S. diplomats.
"Desecration is not part of the freedom of expression, but a criminal act that has now badly affected the righteous sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims all over the globe," a statement from Karzai's office said.
Afghanistan has frequently been hit by bouts of deadly violence prompted by perceived insults against Islam.
Pakistan issued two separate statements, one that condemned "a defamatory video clip in the U.S., maligning the revered and pious personality of the Prophet Muhammad", and another which condemned the killings of U.S. embassy staff. Neither statement gave any suggestion that the incidents were linked.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast also denounced the film while making no mention of the embassy attacks. The United States has a "direct moral responsibility" to stop insults against holy Muslim figures, Iran's Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.
Islam generally prohibits any depiction of Mohammed, whom Muslims revere for receiving the revelation of the Quran and as a model of the virtuous life.
Portions of the film, which appeared to have been made with amateurish actors on cheap sets, showed Mohammed as bisexual, a supporter of child sexual abuse and of violence. The film was promoted by Terry Jones, a once little-known Florida pastor who gained international notoriety for burning the Quran despite a plea by then U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates that the act would put the lives of U.S. troops in danger.
The Vatican in Rome said the violence showed the need to respect religions and avoid insulting believers.
"The serious consequences of unjustified offence and provocations against the sensibilities of Muslim believers are once again evident in these days," the Vatican's chief spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement.
Lombardi said respect for the beliefs, texts, outstanding figures and symbols of religions was "an essential precondition for the peaceful coexistence of peoples."
(Reporting by Reuters staff in Tripoli, Benghazi, Cairo, Washington, Kabul, Islamabad, Dubai, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Rome and at the United Nations; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by David Stamp)

...
Canada Deplores Deadly Attack on U.S. Consulate in Libya
September 12, 2012 - Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today issued the following statement:
“Canada strongly condemns and deeply regrets yesterday’s senseless attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the three other U.S. officials who lost their lives in serving their country.
“We call upon Libyan authorities to take all necessary measures to protect diplomatic premises in accordance with Libya’s international obligations. We also urge Libyan officials to ensure the extremists responsible are brought to swift justice.”

Canada calls deadly Libyan consular attack "senseless," calls for swift justice
The Canadian Press | The Canadian Press OTTAWA - Canada is condemning an attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that killed the American ambassador to that country and three of his staff.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird calls the attack senseless.
And he is demanding that Libya take all necessary steps to protect diplomatic missions in the violence-riddled nation.
U.S. President Barack Obama also condemned the attacks on the consulate and has ordered increased security at U.S. diplomatic posts around the world.
The attacks occurred Tuesday night in the eastern city of Benghazi when protesters stormed the consulate in what officials say was an angry response to a film that ridiculed Islam and its founder, Muhammad.
Ambassador Chris Stevens, 52, and three other Americans were killed when Stevens and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff.
Stevens is the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in an attack since 1979, when Ambassador Adolph Dubs was killed in Afghanistan.


U.N. nuclear agency board set to rebuke Iran: diplomats
By Fredrik Dahl | Reuters –
Reuters - (Reuters) - Six world powers at a United Nations nuclear meeting on Wednesday sought to step up diplomatic pressure on Iran to allay concerns that it is seeking atomic bombs capability and help avert a new Middle East war.
A day after Israel's prime minister ramped up threats to attack the Islamic state, the United States, France, Russia, Germany, China and Britain proposed that Iran be rebuked over its expanded uranium enrichment program, diplomats said.
The six states - involved in a stalled diplomatic push to convince Iran to curb its nuclear program - submitted a proposed resolution to the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is expected to vote on it later this week.
While the move showed big power unity on the matter, it seemed unlikely to have any immediate impact on policymakers in Tehran, which has pressed ahead with its nuclear work despite increasingly harsh economic sanctions. Backing by the six powers means approval by the board is guaranteed, but Western diplomats are keen to ensure as broad support as possible in a bid to intensify international pressure on Tehran, which they suspect wants to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Iran says its work is peaceful.
The draft text expressed "serious concern" about Iran's defiance of U.N. demands to suspend atomic activity which can have both civilian and military purposes.
It voiced particular concern about Fordow, an Iranian enrichment site deep underground where an IAEA report in late August said the Islamic state had doubled its capacity over the last three months, the diplomats said. Iran says its wants to produce electricity and not bombs. Refined uranium can be used to fuel nuclear power plants. If enriched to a high degree, it can provide the explosive core for a nuclear warhead.
SITE ACCESS
Israel, believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, sees the chance of Iran developing an atomic bomb as a threat to its existence and has stepped up hints of military action.
Escalating tension with the United States on how to deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that if world powers refused to set a red line for Tehran's nuclear program, they could not demand that Israel hold its fire. Washington says there is still time for diplomacy and sanctions to make Tehran change course.
In their proposed resolution, the six powers voiced continued "support for a peaceful resolution of the international community's concerns, which could best be achieved through a constructive" diplomatic process. They said Iran should immediately agree a framework accord with the U.N. nuclear watchdog to clarify concerns over possible military dimensions to its nuclear program, including granting inspectors access to the sites it needs for their inquiry. An IAEA investigation into suspected atom bomb research in Iran has made little progress since 2008, with Western diplomats accusing Tehran of stonewalling. "Iranian cooperation with IAEA requests aimed at the resolution of all outstanding issues is essential and urgent in order to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program," the powers said. Russia and China - which have criticized unilateral Western sanctions on Iran's oil exports - were initially reluctant to agree an IAEA board resolution, diplomats said.
(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

U.S. Missions Stormed in Libya, Egypt
Movie Critical of Prophet Muhammad Spurs Attack in Benghazi, Killing American; Protesters Breach Wall of Cairo Compound
By MATT BRADLEY in Cairo and DION NISSENBAUM in Washington/Wall Street Jiurnal
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444017504577645681057498266.html
The U.S. envoy to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other diplomats were killed when suspected Libyan religious extremists stormed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Read the latest news here .
Demonstrators attacked a U.S. consulate in Libya, killing one American, and breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, amid angry protests over a film by a U.S. producer that mocks and insults the Prophet Muhammad.
The movie, "Innocence of Muslims," was directed and produced by an Israeli-American real-estate developer who characterized it as a political effort to call attention to the hypocrisies of Islam. It has been promoted by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of Qurans previously sparked deadly riots around the world.
Egyptian protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and replaced the flag with a black standard bearing an Islamic inscription, in protest of a film deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad. Matt Bradley has details on The News Hub.
Obama Comments on Attack on U.S. Embassy in Libya
President Barack Obama speaks in the White House Rose Garden on the death of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.
Clinton Makes Statement on Envoy's Death
Mitt Romney Issues Statement on Libya Violence
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Killed in Benghazi
In Benghazi, Libya, several dozen gunmen from an Islamist group, Ansar al Sharia, attacked the consulate with rocket-propelled grenades to protest the film, a deputy interior minister for the Benghazi region told the Al-Jazeera network. A government brigade evacuated the consulate, after which militants set it on fire, said the minister, Wanees Sharef.
One State Department officer was killed in the attack in Benghazi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday night.
Mrs. Clinton said the State Department was working with Libyans to secure the compound and protect Americans in Libya.
To the east, in Cairo, a crowd of some 2,000 people gathered at the Embassy to protest the video. Some of them climbed the embassy walls late Tuesday, pulling down and burning an American flag.
Hours after nightfall, dozens of young men remained standing on top of the embassy walls, shouting into megaphones. One of the youths climbed up the flagpole to hoist a black banner emblazoned with the Muslim profession of faith in white letters—"There is no God but God and Muhammad is His Messenger"—a standard used by hardline Islamist groups throughout the world.
At the Cairo Embassy, Egyptian police had removed demonstrators from the grounds, the State Department said. The Egyptian foreign ministry said that the government bears full responsibility for the protection of foreign embassies on Egyptian soil.
The flashpoint appeared to be the film about the Prophet Muhammad, portions of which in recent days have been circulating on the Internet. Contravening the Islamic prohibition of portraying the prophet, clips from the film show him not only as flesh and blood—but as a homosexual son of undetermined patrimony, who rises to advocate child slavery and extramarital sex, for himself, in the name of religion.
"The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," Mrs. Clinton said Tuesday night.
"But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind," she said in reference to the attacks.
The film's 52-year-old writer, director and producer, Sam Bacile, said that he wanted to showcase his view of Islam as a hateful religion. "Islam is a cancer," he said in a telephone interview from his home. "The movie is a political movie. It's not a religious movie."
Mr. Bacile said he raised $5 million from about 100 Jewish donors, whom he declined to identify. Working with about 60 actors and 45 crew members, he said he made the two-hour movie in three months last year in California.
The film has been promoted by Dr. Jones, who said Tuesday that he planned to show a 13-minute trailer that night at his church in Gainesville, Fla.
"It is an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam," he said in a statement. "The movie further reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad."
In the hours leading up to the rally in Cairo, the U.S. Embassy there invoked the First Amendment rights to free speech, but said the film constituted an abuse of those rights.
"The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions," it said in a statement. "Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."
It wasn't clear whether the brief invasion of U.S. Embassy grounds in Cairo—one of the largest diplomatic facilities in the world—would damage America's relationship with the new Islamist-backed Egyptian administration.
With Egypt's economy in a tailspin, its new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, has taken pains to prove that he and his powerful Muslim Brotherhood backers can remain a reliable partner to the West. Two weeks ago, a team of U.S. diplomats were negotiating terms under which the U.S. could forgive the first tranche of $1 billion in debt.
On Tuesday, as protesters attacked, a trade delegation of more than 100 American businessmen were wrapping up a four-day visit meant to stoke investor interest in postrevolutionary Egypt.
"This isn't the optic that [the Brotherhood] are going to be particularly pleased with," said Michael Hanna, an Egypt expert at the New York-based Century Foundation. "The timing is unfortunate for everybody involved."
Mr. Bacile, the filmmaker, said he posted the trailer for his film on YouTube in early July. But it had largely escaped attention until recent days, when activists on Twitter pointed to clips that included actors in anachronistic costumes, near flimsy sets and often stumbling through lines. Egyptian clerics began widely condemning the footage.
In Cairo, protesters said they rallied to the embassy at the prompting of Islamist Facebook groups and hard-line Salafi preachers who frequently preach on Islamist satellite channels.
Early Tuesday evening in Cairo, the crowd of mostly male Islamists converged outside the heavily guarded U.S. mission. Some scaled the embassy's concrete walls but were met by rubber bullets fired by embassy guards, some witnesses reported.
A U.S. Embassy official denied that embassy guards had fired on the protesters.
Protesters destroy an American flag ripped down from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday, as they put a black flag in its place.
Protest leaders said they convinced the young men to leave the embassy grounds without further violence. But after darkness fell, dozens of young men remained. Some of the demonstrators spray painted the slogan on the embassy's walls as hundreds of police, clad in riot gear, sat by.
The movie has been promoted in the U.S. by conservative Coptic Christians, including Morris Sadek, who runs a small group called the National American Coptic Assembly. "The violence that it caused in Egypt is further evidence of how violent the religion and people are and it is evidence that everything in the film is factual," Mr. Sadek said in a telephone interview from his Washington home.
Coptic leaders from around the world denounced the film and its portrayal of Islam.
While protesters in Cairo said they understood American laws on free expression, they saw them as secondary to their religious practice. "Freedom of belief is more important than freedom of expression," said Ashraf Ibrahim, 34, who was at Tuesday's protest.
Egyptian society would never fully adopt the Western notion of "liberalism" despite American-led efforts to impose such ideals on Arab nations, said Mr. Ibrahim's friend, Ahmed Hamza. "The American system will fall," he said.
Like many of the demonstrators, Mr. Hamza and Mr. Ibrahim wore short beards that characterize conservative Muslims.
Though the film was the focus of demonstrators' outrage, the spirited protest amounted to more of a general outpouring of grievances against U.S. policy in the Islamic world. Several signs and chants decried the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as American support for Israel.
Many recalled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that killed thousands of U.S. citizens 11 years earlier.
"Obama! Obama! We are all Osama!" went one chant, referring to Osama bin Laden, the late head of Al Qaeda, the militant Islamist organization widely believed to be responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Mohammed Al Zawahiri, the brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri, was among those who attended the rally early in the evening. The younger Mr. Zawahiri, who has renounced violence and has stylized himself as an intermediary between Islamists and the West, was released from an Egyptian jail in March after serving 10 years on charges of militancy.
—Sam Dagher and Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
Write to Matt Bradley at matt.bradley@dowjones.com

America just cannot be the loved one
September 13, 2012
By Michael Young /The Daily Star
Dozens of disappointing Pew polls later, with the United States government having earmarked vast sums of money for public diplomacy, you have to wonder whether Washington hasn’t run up a blind alley in its desire to be popular among Arabs.
An obscure Israeli-American real estate developer in California uploads a video condemning the Prophet Mohammad, and mobs storm the American consulate in Benghazi, killing an ambassador. In Cairo, demonstrators attack the fortified American Embassy building. Utterly irrelevant, evidently, is the fact that Egypt has benefited from billions of dollars in American aid for over three decades, or that the U.S. helped militarily overthrow Moammar Gadhafi last year.
However, the issue here is not the ungratefulness of the Arabs. There were doubtless quite a few Egyptians and Libyans unhappy with what took place this week. There were probably many more with no opinion whatsoever, who are neither fond of America nor the contrary, largely because America is absent from their daily life.
That doesn’t change the fact that anti-Americanism is more the norm than the exception in the Arab world, even if a vast majority of people never expresses that sentiment in violent ways. Yet who can deny that the mainstreaming of hostility toward America greatly facilitates the violence of minorities? At no time was this more obvious than after 9/11, whose 11th anniversary we commemorated this week, when initial shock soon made way for explanations, then implicit justifications, of the mass murder that had occurred.
It was 9/11, and the question posed at the time, “Why do they hate us,” that sent American officials scurrying for remedies to that hatred. Public diplomacy was given a bureaucratic face-lift, radio and television stations were opened broadcasting in Arabic, and despite the invasion of Iraq, many thought they had discovered the best therapy in the exit of President George W. Bush and his replacement by Barack Obama, who, fortuitously, had “Hussein” as a middle name.
Well, apparently not. Whether it is Obama or Bush, the American sirens calling for more love are apparently not having their effect. There are many reasons for this, but listing them would serve only to reinforce the argument that the Americans are to blame and must, therefore, reshape their conduct to please the Arabs. The Americans are indeed to blame in many ways, just as many in the Arab world are at fault, not least for their hypocrisy when it comes to America. However, the disconnect between America and the Arabs goes beyond perceptions of mutual behavior to include more systemic problems.
It’s a given that the powerful are disliked, and no country has been more powerful than the United States in recent decades. If you have the ability to change things, but no change comes, then you somehow become responsible for everything that goes wrong. The Americans were indeed the defenders of a debilitating status quo in the Middle East, but since 2011 they have been on the side of emancipatory change, despite intense uneasiness. Yet they remain perpetually disliked, with the poll figures sometimes edging up, sometimes down, but always reflecting deep ambiguity toward the superpower.
There is the Israel excuse, of course. Washington’s support for Israel is the knee-jerk pretext whenever an explanation is sought for why America is loathed by Arabs. There is a great deal to censure in Washington’s seemingly unquestioning devotion to Israel, frequently against America’s better interests, but let’s get a grip. For years numerous Arab countries have ruthlessly mistreated or manipulated the Palestinians and their cause, without provoking a discernibly negative reaction from Arab societies.
In light of this, perhaps we must seriously consider that the Arab world has so internalized its disapproval of the United States over time, integrating it perfectly into a prevailing sense of Arab misfortune and frustration, that anti-Americanism has become a constant of Arab political discourse, a crutch of sorts. That is not to say that America is blameless or the Arabs always wrong; it’s to say that the positivist belief among Americans that they can be loved simply by altering their actions and manners is naively overstated.
Being loved is not nearly as important as being respected, and in that regard the United States has been riding a roller coaster. When each post-Cold War administration has cast fundamental doubt on the Middle Eastern policies of its predecessor, holding it responsible for everything that is haywire in the region, expect Arabs to enjoy those catfights, but also to see their doubts about America reinforced. The reality is that when no clear, overriding strategy exists for America’s approach to the Middle East, administrations function more on the basis of domestic politics, calculations and rivalries, and these tend to be alien to the concerns of the Arab countries they influence.
Few Arabs held dear Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, but America fundamentally and advantageously overhauled its policy in the region during the 1970s under their stewardship, on the basis of a careful, long-term reading of Washington’s well-being. In contrast, though George W. Bush injected democracy into America’s regional perspectives, he soon recoiled on that front, before his legacy was overturned by Barack Obama, whose principal motive in the Middle East is to minimize American involvement.
The White House and the State Department would do best to save their public diplomacy funds and focus more on a redefining a lasting, bipartisan strategy toward the Middle East that can span antagonistic administrations. This has not been done in a serious way since 9/11, and it needs to be at this essential moment when Arab countries are facing momentous change. In politics, love is overrated.
*Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR. He tweets @BeirutCalling.