Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday in an interview with NBC News that she worked day and night following the fatal attacks on the Benghazi consulate to ensure the safety of other government workers abroad.

She also discouraged the current debate about who should be blamed for the security breach that led to the attacks.

"I really believe that tragedies like what happened in Benghazi should be viewed in a non-political way," Clinton continued. "Everybody should pull together as Americans."

Rather than focusing on who to blame for the attacks, the State Department stayed "focused not on why something happened that was for the intelligence community to determine, but what was happening and could happen,” Clinton said. “We did everything we could to keep our people safe, which is my primary responsibility.”

She told CNN: "I take responsibility. I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts."

The attacks on the Benghazi consulate on Sept. 11 have become a political piñata leading up to the presidential elections in November.

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Republicans have blamed the Obama administration for wavering on what triggered the attack. Initially, the White House said the attacks were a spontaneous, angry response to a low-budget movie maligning the Prophet Mohammad. The Obama administration has since said the attacks were carefully planned by terrorists.

Four Americans died in the attack, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Protests – some violent, others peaceful – emerged throughout the region and reached as far as Australia.

On Monday, when asked if the initial reports indicated that there had been an intelligence failure, Clinton said she didn’t want to engage in a “blame game.”

"What we want to do is get to the bottom of what happened, figure out what we're going to do to protect people and prevent it from happening again, and then track down who ever did it and bring them to justice," Clinton said, echoing Biden's comments during the debate.

In the media, what happened in Benghazi has become the foreign policy go-to question. Moderator Martha Raddatz made Libya the first topic of discussion during the vice presidential debate last week.

“When you take a look at what has happened just in the last few weeks, they sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video,” Congressman Paul Ryan said during the debate with Vice President Joe Biden. “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.”

On Friday, Clinton reaffirmed U.S. support of Libya, saying pulling back would be a "costly strategic mistake."

The terrorists who attacked the mission do not represent the Libyan people, she said, noting the protests that broke out after the attacks against the militias in Libya.

Related: Clinton reaffirms support for Libya and emerging democracies

"The United States will not retreat," Clinton said on Friday. "We will keep leading and we will stay engaged in the Maghreb and everywhere in the world, including in those hard places where America’s interests and values are at stake."

NBC News' Isolde Raftery contributed to this report.

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AMMAN - Syrian rebels said they planted bombs inside the Syrian army's General Staff headquarters in central Damascus on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad's forces bulldozed buildings to the ground in parts of the capital that have backed the uprising.

Syrian state television said four people were wounded in what it called a terrorist attack on the General Staff compound in the highly guarded Abu Rummaneh district, where another bomb attack killed four of Assad's top lieutenants two months ago.

Syrian rebels say they hit Assad’s air power

As the rebels demonstrated they could strike at the heart of the security apparatus, residents said army bulldozers moved on neighborhoods to the west, destroying at least 20 buildings in the Sunni Muslim areas that have sheltered the insurgents.

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In the eastern Damascus neighborhood of Hazza, footage taken by activists on Sunday showed several buildings on fire. Opposition sources said the army had earlier stormed the area and executed 27 young men.

 

"Any youth of fighting age seems to have been captured and killed," said activist Obadah al-Haj, who had fled the area.

Activist video footage from the area showed a young man lying dead beside a yellow taxi, shot in the face. Another dead youth was in the driver seat, blood covering his head and chest.

Assad belongs to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has dominated power since members of the sect led a military coup in 1963. Assad's father took power in 1970.

Loyalist forces killed at least 25 men on Sunday when they shelled and stormed al-Fan, a Sunni village in the province of Hama, opposition campaigners said.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said most of the men appear to have been killed by shelling, but an unspecified number were executed when troops stormed the village later. The official state news agency said a military operation on Fan targeted "terrorists who were scaring citizens."

 

Assad stays cool amid reported slaughter on the bread lines

Video footage from Fan taken by activists showed women and family members crying over bodies wrapped in white sheets and placed in a row on the floor of a mosque.

As the uprising in Syria has spread over the last 18 months, it has taken on a more sectarian bent, with activists saying Assad's best trained forces are spearheading the fight in the capital.

Assad, who is backed by Shi'ite Iran and its Hezbollah Lebanese proxy, has lost control of rural areas in northern, eastern and southern regions and has used helicopter gunships and fighter jets to try to subdue the opposition.

But the aerial bombardment has driven fresh waves of refugees into neighboring countries, reviving Turkish calls for "safe zones" to be set up on Syrian territory.

With Russia and China blocking action by the U.N. Security Council however and little appetite among Western states, or Turkey itself, for committing troops to secure such zones, there is scant chance they will be set up any time soon.

In the U.S., Syria has occasionally popped up in presidential campaign rhetoric. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney told CBS News that he would send U.S. troops to Syria if needed to prevent the spread of chemical weapons.

“Clearly the concern would be that some terrorist group, whether Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida or others would receive the capacity to carry out a mass destruction, mass death type of event,” Romney said. “And therefore America has to be ready whether it’s there or anywhere else in the world.”

On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said Romney is “ready to go to war in Syria and Iran.”

Biden did not use similar language on Syria at a later campaign stop.

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Osama bin Laden wanted to assassinate Barack Obama so that the "utterly unprepared" Joe Biden would become U.S. president, according to documents seized last year during the U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.

In letters from his last hideout -- according to a report called "Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined?" that was posted online Thursday by the U.S. Army's Combating Terrorism Center -- bin Laden also fretted about dysfunction in his terrorist network and the loss of trust from Muslims he wished to incite against their government and the West. 

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Read the Combating Terrorism Center's report (pdf)

Other materials found inside the compound last May have revealed how al-Qaida's then leader regularly ordered his subordinates to plan new attacks, despite an increasingly limited cadre of operatives. 

Bin Laden in hiding: Hatching horrific plots despite crippling attacks on al-Qaida

During the raid, Navy SEALs recovered five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices -- DVDs, discs and thumb drives --  that included between 10,000 and 15,000 documents and between 15,000 to 25,000 videos, including a large number of duplicate files.

Al-Qaida hoped to convert Irish?

The documents also contained some slightly odd revelations, including the idea that al-Qaida thought Irish Catholics might be ripe for conversion to Islam.

“I noticed the sympathy of the Irish people to the Palestinian issue, and the soft treatment by the Irish Judicial system of Muslims accused of terrorism, and also not participating with its troops in [President George W.] Bush’s Crusade wars,” American al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn wrote in a letter.

“The other matter is the increasing anger in Ireland towards the Catholic Church after exposing a number of sex scandals … The people there are moving towards secularism, after it was the most religious of atheist Europe, and why do not we face them with Islam?” he added.

Al-Qaida also fretted over its brand name. One document discussed how the group’s name was shortened from Qaida al-Jihad to al-Qaida and “this name reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them.” It suggested names that could not be easily shortened “to a word that does not represent us.”

Those included “Muslim Unity Group,” “Restoration of the Caliphate Group,” and “Jihad Organization for the Unification and Rescue of the Nation.”

Al-Qaida also appears to have had a particular dislike for Fox News.

Talking about sending an al-Qaida message to the media, the spokesman Gadahn wrote, “I suggest that we should distribute it to more than one channel, so that there will be healthy competition between the channels in broadcasting the material, so that no other channel takes the lead. It should be sent for example to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN and maybe PBS and VOA.”

However Fox News, Gadahn said, should be left out the loop.

“As for Fox News, let her die in her anger,” he wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON -- China has agreed to significantly improve market access for American movies, capping a weeklong visit by China's leader-in-waiting that led to billions of dollars in business deals, Vice President Joe Biden said Friday.

"This agreement with China will make it easier than ever before for U.S. studios and independent filmmakers to reach the fast-growing Chinese audience, supporting thousands of American jobs in and around the film industry," Biden said in a statement obtained by NBC News after Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's whirlwind tour to the United States. "At the same time, Chinese audiences will have access to more of the finest films made anywhere in the world."

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"U.S. studios and independent filmmakers cite China as one of their most important world markets, but barriers imposed by China and challenged by the United States in the WTO have artificially reduced the revenue U.S. film producers received from their movies in the Chinese market," said United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk. "This agreement will help to change that, boosting one of America's strongest export sectors in one of our largest export markets."

On a global basis, films and other audiovisual services create a $12 billion trade surplus in the sector for the United States, the White House said.

Last year, Chinese box office revenue was up to $2.1 billion, with much of that from 3D titles.

The agreement allows more American exports to China of 3D, IMAX, and similar enhanced-format movies on favorable commercial terms, the U.S. Trade Representative's office said.

"This is a major step forward in spurring the growth of U.S. exports to China," Chris Dodd, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), said in a statement.

"It has long been a top priority for the MPAA, and it is tremendous news for the millions of American workers and businesses whose jobs depend on the entertainment industry."

Walt Disney Co. president and CEO Robert Iger said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter: "China is one of the most populous countries in the world, and this agreement represents a significant opportunity to provide Chinese audiences increased access to our films."

The U.S. movie industry has long complained about China's tight restrictions on the number of foreign films allowed into the country each year, a limit that they say helps fuel demand for pirated DVDs that are widely available in China.

While the quota of 20 foreign films per year remains in place, Beijing granted other concessions that pleased Hollywood.

The deal strengthens the opportunities to distribute films through private enterprises rather than the state film monopoly, and ensures fairer compensation levels for U.S. blockbuster films distributed by Chinese state-owned enterprises, U.S. trade officials said.

The agreement will be reviewed after 5 years to ensure that it is working as envisioned, they said.

NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.

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