It doesn’t get any better.

You had troops on the ground in live radio contact and two drones overhead giving live video feed. You don’t get much more situation info than that. Yet military commander General Carter Ham was relieved of command for not being able to stand listening to and or watching our personnel die. He was going to go against orders and set up a rescue. A rescue was not what the polls in DC wanted. Too much to infer that they intended the 4 deaths, but not unrealistic to surmise that they intended the capturing. As the consulate had been kept unarmed, the wild card here was the ex SEALS brought weaponry and were fighting back. Thus was not foreseeable and may have been what p-oed the attackers to the point that they killed Ambassador Stevens.