Why can't the State Department tell us the truth the first time when its diplomats are assassinated in Islamic countries? Is there a malady we can call the Benghazi Syndrome at work? Mere incompetence may be the parsimonious explanation, but it doesn't account for the deliberate obfuscation we still experience over the Benghazi massacre, and it is too early to tell what really went down in Afghanistan when photogenic 25 year old junior diplomat Anne Smedinghoff and four other Americans less photogenic and less female perhaps but equally important though ignored by the major media, were assassinated.

Shaun Waterman of the Washington Times reports:

The State Department has acknowledged that five U.S. personnel killed in Afghanistan, including 25-year-old diplomat Anne Smedinghoff, were on foot when they were attacked by a suicide bomber, and not in an armored vehicle, as officials had told bereaved relatives earlier this week.

The violent deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel - and the State Department's changing account of how they died - harken back to the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, where Islamist extremists killed four Americans in assaults on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11.

 "We are able to clarify at this point that they were in a walking movement from the [Provincial Reconstruction Team's base] down to the school down the road," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters Wednesday.

It cannot be easy to be a US diplomat stationed overseas these days. The last two Secretaries of State have been arrogant and imperious politicians far removed from the realities of actual life as a diplomat, and focused on their own personal ambitions.  And their department seems to have a very difficult time telling the truth when its diplomats get into trouble.