Two reports by leading reporters at the country’s best newspapers offer new research on what happened that night at the US mission in Benghazi, but the partisan flack being thrown around in the wake of these new revelations is mostly besides the point.

Hundreds of al Qaeda-linked fighters battled state security agents for control of two large cities west of Baghdad on Friday in the third straight day of intense violence. Yesterday, radical Sunni militants dressed in black and waving the al Qaeda flag rampaged through Falluja and Ramadi, freeing prisoners from jail, setting fire to police stations, blowing up government buildings, and exhorting their fellow Iraqis to join the fight over mosque loudspeakers. Government troops fought them street by street. On Friday, after a brief lull, fighting erupted again.