BENGHAZIGATE: THE STATE OF THE STORY

Even for one who follows the news obsessively — one such as I — it has been extremely difficult to keep up with the developments in the Benghazigate story this week. In his weekly column, Mark Steyn incorporates Thursday’s and Friday’s breaking news and brings the story up to date with his characteristic flair:

“We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.

If voting for Obama is like the first time you have sex, it’s very difficult to lose your virginity twice. A flailing, pitiful campaign has now adopted Queen Victoria’s supposed wedding advice to her daughter: “Lie back and think of England.” Lie back and think of America. And then get up and get dressed. Who wants to sleep with a $16 trillion broke loser twice?

Long ago I was a SEAL officer and I attended many joint and combined operational planning meetings in the USA, abroad, and on ships at sea. This type of rescue mission is called a “NEO” operation, for Non-combatant Evacuation Operation. Every embassy and consulate has and practices all kinds of emergency evac plans, in concert with the US military.

For example, Marines and SEALs practice NEO ops prior to deploying on every float, as a VERY high priority mission. They involve full dress-rehearsals, with civilian role players, helos, landing craft, rounding up stranded stragglers, opfor ambushes, role-playing “angry mobs,” fighting your way to LZs or even beaches while protecting a gaggle of civilians down to babies etc. Conducting successful NEO ops is a TOP TOP TOP military and state department mission priority. I cannot emphasize this enough. NEO ops are planned and practiced over and over and over.

When the alarm goes off worldwide that an embassy or consulate is being attacked, the entire U.S. military swings into rescue mode, without waiting for any orders from the White House. The military does all of the operational planning and begins to execute the rescue op.

The one thing they CAN’T do is cross an international border without permission from POTUS. So the US Military will be inbound full-steam-ahead to make the rescue, and all they need from POTUS is a “proceed” order. In this case, they got a “stand down” instead.

This is at the POTUS level, it is not a decision taken at State. State and the military (JCS) should be in the Situation Room with POTUS soon after a critical incident like this begins, so all decisions can be made in real time. (I have heard nowhere that POTUS went into the Situation Room at all. Apparently he went to the Oval Office briefly, but not down to the Situation Room, where the “war planning” screens, full staffs and commo tools are all located for dealing with a major crisis.)

But if POTUS punts after a brief Oval Office meeting with Dempsey and Hillary and goes upstairs to the family quarters....the stranded Americans will die.

Only POTUS can give the order to cross international borders. Only POTUS can allow US warplanes to give air support to Americans battling on the ground in a foreign country. If POTUS makes himself unavailable, the Americans will die.

Even the VEEP or Secretary of State cannot make that call. The VEEP can only do it if the POTUS is determined to be medically unable to perform his functions. If the POTUS goes upstairs and turns off his phone, there is nothing anybody can do about it. Nothing. And the besieged Americans will die.

On Friday an anonymous Pentagon insider (”Doug”) called into Rush with a lot of new details about this disgraceful fiasco. But what we really need now is for a high-ranking officer with insider knowledge to go public, risk his pension and career, and tell the truth.

The blame for this humiliating and shameful national disgrace is pointing directly at the POTUS, and America needs to know why the inbound rescue operation was aborted.

I am willing to believe anything about “Obama” - anything.

One of the troubles with wrapping your head around the last four years is that there are too many things to consider believing - it is such an incredible period in our history.

Do you have an idea about “Obama” and motive for a stand down order? It could not do him any good to abort a rescue mission, only seven weeks away from “more flexibility”. A successful rescue (good odds, not a sure thing) would have helped him tremendously. A Desert One replay would have cost him, sure, but not as much as this is costing.

I don’t get it.

Travis is spot on in his assesment. As a Marine I was involved in NEO ops training before deploying wth the 11th and 15 MEUs. The other point that needs to hammered over and over is the fact that one of the CIA operators was on the roof with a Laser Target Designator and was activly painting targets. He would not have been painting targets unless an aircraft was already on station.
There are certain handoffs that have to be made between the operator on the ground and the aircraft overhead when using the Laser Designator. One of which is the aircraft acknowledging the the laser coding from that designator.
In the Marine Corps when Close Air Support is brought in the Marine on the ground gives the pilot the grid coordinate of the target, the wind speed on the deck, the enemy situation to include number of enemy and type of equipment. He also gives the pilot his laser coding. The pilot will then give a “read back” of the info passed to him and and a Time on Target for delivery of weapons. I gaurantee that this procedure was done and the aircrew was waiting for the go call. These men were left to twist in the wind by the President.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.