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WASHINGTON (AP) — To congressional Republicans, "Benghazi" is shorthand for incompetence and cover-up. Democrats hear it as the hollow sound of pointless investigations.

It is, in fact, a Mediterranean port city in Libya that was the site of an attack on an American diplomatic compound on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. That's nearly all that U.S. politicians can agree on about Benghazi.

It's been a political rallying cry since just weeks before President Barack Obama's re-election in November 2012. With the launch of a new House investigation, Benghazi is shaping up as a byword of this fall's midterm election and the presidential race in 2016, especially if former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is on the ballot.

The administration on Tuesday heralded its first arrest in the case: Ahmed Abu Khatallah, a senior leader of the Benghazi branch of the terror group Ansar al-Shariah in Libya, who was being held on a U.S. Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

A guide to the controversy:

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SETTING THE SCENE

The 2011 revolt that deposed and killed Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, with the help of NATO warships and planes, began in Benghazi. A year later, the city of 1 million remained chaotic, in the grip of heavily armed militias and Islamist militants, some with links to al-Qaida.

The temporary U.S. diplomatic mission, created to build ties and encourage stability and democracy, was struck by homemade bombs twice in the spring of 2012. British diplomats, the Red Cross and other Westerners were targeted that spring and summer.

Stevens, based in the capital city of Tripoli, chose to visit Benghazi on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when U.S. embassies around the world were on alert for terrorism.

In Egypt that day, a different sort of trouble struck, trouble that would spread to other Mideast cities over several days: Protesters angry about an anti-Muslim video made in America stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, clambering over the walls and setting flags on fire.

Hours later, the assault in Benghazi began.

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A FIERY ASSAULT AND FOUR DEATHS

The Benghazi attack came in three waves, spread over eight hours at two locations.

According to accounts from congressional investigators and the State Department's Accountability Review Board:

Around 9:40 p.m., a few attackers scaled the wall of the diplomatic post and opened the front gate, allowing dozens of armed men in. Local Libyan security guards fled. A U.S. security officer shepherded Stevens and Sean Smith, a State Department communications specialist, into a fortified "safe room" in the main building.

Attackers set the building and its furniture afire with diesel fuel. Stevens and Smith were overcome by blinding, choking smoke that prevented security officers from reaching them. Libyan civilians found Stevens in the wreckage hours later and took him to a hospital, where he, like Smith, died of smoke inhalation.

Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty in more than 30 years.

A security team from the CIA annex about a mile away arrived to help about 25 minutes into the attack, armed only with rifles and handguns. The U.S. personnel fled with Smith's body back to the annex in armored vehicles.

Hours after the first attack ended, the annex was twice targeted by early morning mortar fire. The second round killed Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, two CIA security contractors who were defending the annex from the rooftop.

A team of six security officials summoned from Tripoli and a Libyan military unit helped evacuate the remaining U.S. personnel on the site to the airport and out of Benghazi.

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THE FALLOUT BACK HOME

Word hit Washington in the final weeks of the presidential race. Over the next several days, the Benghazi news blended with images of angry anti-American demonstrations and flag-burnings spreading across the Middle East over the offensive video.

Political reaction to the Benghazi attack quickly formed along partisan lines that hold fast to this day.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and others said Obama had emboldened Islamic extremists by being weak against terrorism. But the public still credited Obama with the successful strike against al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden a few months earlier in Pakistan.

The accusation that took hold was a Republican charge that the White House intentionally misled voters by portraying the Benghazi assault as one of the many protests over the video, instead of a calculated terrorist attack under his watch.

Obama accused the Republicans of politicizing a national tragedy. He insists that the narrative about the video protests was the best information available at the time.

After 13 public hearings, the release of 25,000 pages of documents and 50 separate briefings over the past year and a half, the arguments are the same.

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WHO IS TO BLAME FOR LEAVING THE DIPLOMATIC POST SO VULNERABLE?

Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed: The State Department under Clinton kept open the Benghazi mission, which employed a few State employees and more than two dozen CIA workers, with little protection in the midst of well-known dangers.

The attack probably could have been prevented if the department had heeded intelligence warnings about the deteriorating situation in eastern Libya, a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee said.

Britain closed its Benghazi mission in June 2012, after an attack on the British ambassador's convoy injured two security guards.

Stevens' requests for more security, made clear in cables to State Department headquarters that July and August, went unheeded, according to the Senate report, as did those made by his predecessor earlier that year.

But Stevens also twice declined the U.S. military's offer of a special operations team to bolster security and otherwise help his staff.

The month after the fatal assault, Clinton declared that she had been responsible for the safety of those serving in Benghazi, without acknowledging any specific mistakes on her part. Obama said the blame ultimately rested on his shoulders as president.

The administration continued to distance both of them, however, saying neither Clinton nor Obama was aware of the requests for better protection because security decisions were handled at lower levels.

Four senior State Department officials were put on paid leave after the independent accountability board said that security at the Benghazi mission that night was "grossly inadequate." After a review, the department reassigned three officials to positions of lesser responsibility; one resigned.

Some Republicans complained that no one was fired. Critics also questioned why the board didn't interview Clinton during its investigation.

Democrats tried to shift some blame to GOP lawmakers, complaining that they had cut the administration's budget request for diplomatic security in 2012.

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WHY DIDN'T THE MILITARY COME TO THE RESCUE?

No military resources were in position to counter the surprise attack, the bipartisan Senate review found.

The military sent surveillance drones that relayed information to the security officers on the ground. It began moving Marines and special forces toward Libya, but the surviving American personnel were evacuated before they could arrive. Two Defense Department personnel arrived from Tripoli to help transport the Americans to the Benghazi airport.

The Senate panel rejected claims that the military had been ordered to "stand down" as the tragedy unfolded.

That persistent allegation has divided Republican lawmakers.

Some continue to pursue the theory that an order from on high blocked possible military action, such as rushing more personnel from Tripoli or scrambling fighter jets from Italy. Other Republicans, including members of the House Armed Services Committee, have accepted assurances from the Pentagon that nothing more could be done in time.

The bipartisan committee did fault the military, however, for failing to anticipate the possibility of such an emergency in Benghazi and not having a response plan ready.

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DID OBAMA INTENTIONALLY MISLEAD AMERICANS?

Obama's opponents are focused on the "talking points," a memo prepared for lawmakers and for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to help her get ready for appearances on the Sunday news shows to discuss the attack less than a week after it occurred.

That memo is offered as evidence of a possible White House cover-up. It offers something that's golden to investigators — a paper trail.

Last year, the administration reluctantly released 100 pages of emails documenting the administration's editing of the talking points, first composed by the CIA. The final version omitted references to possible al-Qaida influences in the attack and retained the theory that it grew out of a street protest.

On television, Rice described the attack as a "horrific incident where some mob was hijacked, ultimately, by a handful of extremists." Since then, numerous investigations have concluded there were no protesters outside the Benghazi compound before the armed assault.

Republicans argue that the administration already knew that. The White House says Rice was giving the best information available from intelligence agencies at that time.

Two months after her TV appearances, the controversy ended Rice's chance to follow Clinton as secretary of state. Obama instead named her his national security adviser.

Just this April, another email showing the White House's efforts at political damage control surfaced among documents released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Republicans charged that the administration had violated an earlier congressional subpoena by holding back that email by deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. White House press secretary Jay Carney contended that the email, outlining how Rice should answer questions in her TV appearances, focused on the overall Mideast protests, not Benghazi.

The email says one of Rice's goals is "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy" and also includes the assertion that the Benghazi assault apparently grew out of a street demonstration.

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"WHAT DIFFERENCE, AT THIS POINT, DOES IT MAKE?"

As the presumed front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, Clinton is the prime political target of the Benghazi probes.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chosen to lead a new House select committee on Benghazi, acknowledges that its work may continue into the presidential campaign season. Gowdy says he wants the investigation to be exhaustive and fair. The House Democrats' leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, called the committee "a political stunt" but said Democrats would participate to bring balance.

If it achieves nothing else, the Benghazi investigation will cloud Clinton's record and force her to watch every word. Critics already have latched onto her what-difference-does-it-make moment at a Senate hearing to portray her as indifferent to the truth.

Here's what she said, under questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about why the State Department didn't quickly call the evacuees and ask whether there had been protesters outside the compound before repeating that story on the Sunday talk shows:

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans," Clinton said with evident exasperation. "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and prevent it from ever happening again, senator."

In a chapter of her coming memoir obtained by Politico, Clinton writes that the meaning of her words has been twisted by those waging "a political slugfest."

House Speaker John Boehner says Republicans aren't playing politics. "The American people have not been told the truth about Benghazi," he said, "and we're committed to getting it."

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AN UNFINISHED STORY

It took nearly two years for the U.S. to make its first arrest in the case, and Attorney General Eric Holder promised an ongoing investigation "as we work to identify and arrest any co-conspirators."

Obama promised that Abu Khatallah would face "a court of law and be held accountable for his actions."

The administration has named two militant groups that officials believe were among the attackers. One is led by a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Sufian bin Qumu, who was released from the U.S. military prison in Cuba in 2007. He was described by officials there as "a probable member of al-Qaida."

The suspected groups are considered ideological cousins of the terrorists behind the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. But State Department officials say they don't think core al-Qaida leaders orchestrated the Benghazi attack.

Since the Benghazi mission was burned, the rebel brigades that once fought Gadhafi's forces have hardened into increasingly powerful militias, many made up of Islamic extremists. Libya's central government is weak, security forces can't maintain control, and bombings and shootings continue.

The State Department maintains the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli but hasn't returned to Benghazi.

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Follow Connie Cass on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ConnieCass

WASHINGTON (AP) — The contest for the No. 3 spot in the House GOP has turned into conservatives' last, best shot at joining the congressional leadership after getting shut out of the two top jobs in the shake-up that followed Majority Leader Eric Cantor's surprise primary defeat.

It's become an intense intramural clash with no certain outcome, as two candidates from different ideological outposts and regions of the country — a conservative Southerner and an establishment-aligned Midwesterner — are challenged by a third who could play the role of spoiler for tea party hopes.

All three — Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Peter Roskam of Illinois and Marlin Stutzman of Indiana — were to make their case to rank-and-file lawmakers Wednesday ahead of a Thursday vote.

The job they're vying for is majority whip, likely to become vacant because its current occupant, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, is the strong favorite to become the new majority leader in a separate vote Thursday if he staves off a longshot challenge from conservative Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho.

The whip position is perhaps little known outside Washington (or at least was, before Kevin Spacey's scheming portrayal on the Netflix program "House of Cards"), but it entails lining up the votes to ensure victory for the party's legislative agenda. And in this case, the contest itself has come to dramatize the deep feud within the GOP that pits conservative purists against lawmakers more aligned with the Republican establishment.

In Cantor's primary election in Virginia last week, the purists won. A virtually unknown insurgent, economics professor Dave Brat, defied all predictions to beat the majority leader, who then announced his resignation from his leadership post. The establishment quickly struck back, maintaining its hold on the top two slots in the House as Speaker John Boehner of Ohio remained unchallenged and McCarthy moved swiftly to all but cement his ascent.

That left the whip job likely up for grabs and the focus of a charged campaign.

If there is a front-runner, it might be Scalise, 48, who chairs the conservative Republican Study Committee in the House and hails from the red-state South, a regional and political perspective that's now missing in House leadership and that many Southerners, and others, say is needed. Scalise is presenting himself as a strong conservative but one who can work with establishment-aligned leaders, not just throw bombs.

"We've proven you can pass conservative policy that unites our conference," Scalise said Tuesday evening after meeting with Pennsylvania Republicans to make his pitch. "Because I think there was some feeling for a while that there was a conflict between the two, that it was either one or the other. And we've shown that there's a different way you can do this."

Roskam, 52, now serves as McCarthy's chief deputy and can make the case that he already knows the job and can count votes. To counter the regional argument, he's promised to appoint a red-state lawmaker as his own chief deputy.

"There is a heroic majority here, there is a majority in our conference that wants to move forward and do great things, and I want to be part of trying to bring that out," Roskam said after his own meeting with Pennsylvania lawmakers. He dismissed concerns about his conservative bona fides, noting he'd won election to the House in 2006, a tough year for Republicans when Democrats took back the House.

"I am a conservative who won in suburban Chicago in 2006 as a conservative through and through," Roskam said.

Stutzman, 37, was a late entrant into the contest and is presenting himself as a fresh face, supported by some tea party figures in the House and some allies who, like him, were elected in the GOP wave election of 2010. He's staked out less support than either Roskam or Scalise and some fear a scenario where he splits the conservative vote with Scalise, opening a path for Roskam.

If no candidate gets an outright majority in Thursday's secret ballot — that would be 117 if all GOP lawmakers vote — the lowest vote-getter will be eliminated and ballots recast between the top two finishers.

BAGHDAD (AP) — As militants seize wide swaths of territory in Iraq, the specter of the sectarian warfare that nearly tore the country apart and the doubts that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion now haunt those trying decide how to blunt the lightning offensive.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who campaigned on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, will brief lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, where the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized key northern cities in the Sunni heartland last week.

U.S. officials say imminent airstrikes remain unlikely, especially as Obama himself said last week any short-term military actions needs to accompany political changes by the government in Baghdad. Protests by Sunnis before the offensive targeted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government and sparked the latest round of sectarian bloodshed, recalling nearly a decade ago when Baghdad woke virtually every morning to find dozens of bodies dumped in the streets, trash heaps or in the Tigris River, bullet-riddled or with torture marks.

Tuesday, at least 44 Sunni detainees were slaughtered by gun shots to the head and chest by pro-government Shiite militiamen after Sunni insurgents tried to storm the jail near Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.

The Iraqi military gave a different account and put the death toll at 52, insisting that mortar shells killed the Sunni inmates in the attack late Monday on the facility.

In Baghdad, the bullet-riddled bodies of four men in their late 20s or early 30s, presumably Sunnis, were found Tuesday at different locations in the Shiite neighborhood of Benouk, police and morgue officials said.

Also Tuesday, a car bomb in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City district killed 12 people and wounded 30 in a crowded outdoor market, police and hospital officials said. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but attacks targeting Shiite districts are routinely the work of Sunni militants.

The police and medical officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with journalists.

In a move apparently designed to satisfy Obama's demand for political inclusion, Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders issued a joint statement late Tuesday stressing the importance of setting "national priorities" that adhere to democratic mechanisms in resolving divisions and condemning sectarian rhetoric.

But the Iraqi government also made a scathing attack on Saudi Arabia, accusing the Arab world's Sunni powerhouse of meddling in its affairs and acquiescing to terrorism. The harsh words came in response to a Saudi Cabinet statement blaming what it called "the sectarian and exclusionist policies in Iraq in recent years" for the latest violence.

The Sunni militants of the Islamic State have vowed to march to Baghdad and the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in the worst threat to Iraq's stability since U.S. troops left. The three cities are home to some of the most revered Shiite shrines. The Islamic State has also tried to capture Samarra north of Baghdad, home to another major Shiite shrine.

Some 275 armed American forces are being positioned in and around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets as Obama considers an array of options for combating the Islamic militants, including airstrikes or a contingent of special forces.

The White House has continued to emphasize that any military engagement remains contingent on the government in Baghdad enacting political reforms and ending sectarian tensions, which had been on the rise even before the Islamic State's incursion last week, with thousands killed since late last year.

Republicans have been critical of Obama's handling of Iraq, but Congress remains deeply divided over what steps the U.S. can take militarily. Even lawmakers who voted in 2002 to give President George W. Bush the authority to use military force to oust Saddam Hussein have expressed doubts about the effectiveness of drone airstrikes and worry about Americans returning to the fight in a country split by sectarian violence.

"Where will it lead and will that be the beginning or the end?" Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said, when asked about possible U.S. airstrikes. "We don't know that. This underlying conflict has been going on 1,500 years between the Shias and the Sunnis and their allies. And I think whatever we do, it's not going to go away."

During the United States' eight-year presence in Iraq, American forces acted as a buffer between the two Islamic sects, albeit with limited success. But U.S. forces fully withdrew at the end of 2011 when Washington and Baghdad could not reach an agreement to extend the American military presence there.

That Sunni-Shiite divide was on stark display in the accounts given by Iraqi Shiites fleeing the strategic city of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, which was captured by Sunni militants of the Islamic State Monday.

The advancing militants set Shiite homes ablaze and killed at least six Shiite men who were unable to leave, said Adek, a 26-year-old Shiite who fled to the Germawa camp in the largely-autonomous Kurdish area of Dohuk.

"If the (Sunni militants) stay in Tel Afar, the Shiites can't go back home, but the Sunnis can," said another Shiite resident, 37-year-old Maitham. Both men gave only their first names for fear of reprisals by the militants.

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Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad, Diaa Hadid In Germawa, Iraq, and Julie Pace, Donna Cassata and Bradley Klapper in Washington contributed to this report.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is best known for effectively ending collective bargaining for public workers and becoming the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election.

But now Walker's bid for re-election in a tight race may hinge on something he didn't do.

Walker promised in 2010 that over four years the state would add 250,000 private sector jobs.

More than three years into his term, Walker is falling far short of fulfilling the pledge.

It's a major issue in the campaign where he faces likely Democratic nominee Mary Burke, a former bicycle company executive who is touting her business background as a credential.

Although the post-recession recovery is adding jobs here, Wisconsin is lagging all but one of nine Midwest states in that category.