Posted on 10/27/2012 11:10:59 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
In the month and a half since our consulate in Benghazi was sacked and our ambassador and three other staffers killed the Obama regime is no closer to presenting a coherent, truthful narrative of what happened before, during, and after the incident than it was when it uttered its first deliberate lies and misdirections on September 12.
Right now we are being treated to the vision of the highest level of the ongoing criminal enterprise that governs us playing the equivalent of a game of musical chairs.
About a week ago, the political branches of the regime decided to finger the intelligence services as the culprits. We’ve been told over and over how there just wasn’t sufficient intelligence provided to either anticipate the attack or to determine the identities of the attackers. Of course, we now know that both those stories are unmitigated falsehoods.
The newest question is who allowed the four men to be killed in Benghazi, or conversely who forbade any attempt to save their lives. This decision seems to reach all the way into the Oval Office.
What we now know is that the attack was monitored, in real time, in the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House, and at Africom HQ in Germany. We know there was a Predator drone overhead and we know the consulate provided live audio feed of the attack until the end.
An important fact is buried here.
Predators don’t just magically appear on the scene. They have to be launched and they have to have a mission when they are launched. A Predator UAV has a range of 675 miles with a max speed of 135mph. The UAV almost certainly had to have been launched from the US facility at Signonella in Sicily.
This means that the UAV was launched over three hours before the attack began and the operation order issued some time before launch. This implies that hours before the attack was launched there was sufficient concern about something in Benghazi that a UAV was tasked to be on station.
The administration is also fond of referring to the attack being at night. While that is true, what they are trying to do is create the illusion that the attack happened in the middle of the night in Washington. It didn’t. The attack began around 2pm EST, right in the middle of the duty day with everyone who was needed to make the required decisions on hand.
>>>President Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Biden in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. ET, a little more than an hour after the onset of the attack. The Pentagon began moving military assets:
– Eight from Special Operations were sent from Tripoli.
– A “FAST team” (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security team) of Marines from Rota, Spain, were sent to guard the Embassy in Tripoli.
– A Special Operations force was moved from central Europe to Sigonella Air Base in southern Italy, just 480 miles from Benghazi.
– F-16s and Apache helicopters remained parked and unused at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.
– Two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean Sea were moved off the coast of Libya on the day of the attack but were never used.
Asked why the U.S. military did not do more, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the first rule in such a situation is not to deploy troops into harm’s way unless there is a clear picture of what is happening.<<<<
One doesn’t know what to make of Panetta’s statement. You never have a “clear picture” of an evolving combat operation. This is what Clausewitz referred to as “friction” and the “fog of war.” It seems that a reasonable observer would conclude that real time video feed plus real time audio communications with the people in the consulate provided as close to a “clear picture” as possible in the absence of a Vulcan Mind Meld with the terrorist leader.
So we have a rescue force staged in Sigonella. We have the people on the ground begging for help. And we seem to have had an AC-130 gunship in near proximity to the action. And a decision was made by someone that caused the death of these four men just as surely as any action by a Libyan terrorist:
>>> Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”
Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.
At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.<<<
Pay special attention to the last graf. The security officer was painting a target with a laser designator. You don’t do that unless the AC-130 is close enough to acquire the target.
Not long after Jennifer Griffin filed the report quoted above, CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement:
>>>“No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”<<<
What it doesn’t say practically screams at the reader. He is clearly saying that someone denied help but it wasn’t anyone in the CIA. He doesn’t even deny that the CIA passed on the bad news.
Now the White House has said it wasn’t them:
>>>The White House on Saturday flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11th.
“Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.<<<
The White House statement really doesn’t mean anything. First and foremost, this White House lies just to keep in practice. They’ll lie about what cereal Obama had for breakfast so lying about something akin to manslaughter is hardly unsurprising. As we parse the statement, keep in mind the White House doesn’t actually command military forces. Any order from the White House would be relayed by way of the Secretary of Defense who is increasingly looking like the guy with no chair nearby as the music stops.
Panetta’s weaselly “clear picture” statement gives the impression of a man with a guilty conscience. He is the guy who exercised command authority over all the resources available to attempt a rescue and he is the guy who would have told them to not respond. But the idea that the President of the United States just abruptly left the situation room and did no participate in the decision is ludicrous on its face.
The facts now seem fairly clear. Forces were positioned to effect a rescue of at least some of the men who are now dead. An order was given by the Secretary of Defense to not launch a rescue attempt either by the reaction force staged in Sicily or by an AC-130 gunship orbiting over head. The White House had video feed and audio feed available presenting them with a clear picture of the situation on the ground. And the President of the United States decided four dead Americans was a small price to pay for preserving the political fiction of the Arab Spring.
Obama has a habit of dithering. Remember the delay in the decision about the surge in Afghanistan?
No, just a coward.
Did Obama Refuse To Aid Our Men In Benghazi?
“Just one hour flight time away were U.S. Air Force bases that could have been rousted in minutes to send fighter planes and attack helicopters that could have routed the attackers in minutes of fighting. As Investors Business Daily editorialized on October 24, “Within an hour’s flight time from Libya, at the large naval air station in Sigonella, Italy, and at bases in nearby Aviano and Souda Bay, were fighters and AC 130 gunships that can be extremely effective in dispersing crowds or responding to a terrorist assault.” But the order for the rescue never came. Maybe because Barack Obama did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities by such a show of force.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/10/25/benghazi-obamas-actions-amount-to-a-shameful-dereliction-of-duty/
Since we had 2 available, at one time or another, flying over Benghazi before and during the 7+ hour assault on Americans, why didn't Panetta order a strike [lasers were pointing to the enemy position on the ground]? ______________________________________________
".....On February 19, 2009, Leon Panetta was sworn in as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency by Vice President Joe Biden before an audience of CIA employees. Panetta reportedly received a "rock star welcome" from his new subordinates.
In March 2009, Panetta visited India to discuss a host of issues including common strategy on dealing with Islamic extremism and Taliban. This was his first international visit since he assumed office.
Panetta supported U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, which he identified as the "most effective weapon" against senior Al-Qaeda leadership. These attacks increased significantly under Panetta, with as many as 50 suspected Al-Qaeda militants being killed in May 2009 alone.
As Director of the CIA, Panetta presided over the operations that led to Osama bin Laden's death on May 1, 2011...." Source
maybe Panetta ought to be reminded..
my honor and my life
both grow as one
take honor from me
and my life is done....
shakespeare king richard II
No it isn't. I wouldn't be at all suprised if the Caligula-in-chief did exactly that.
That’s exactly the issue I have with the story: everyone at the WH has pulled the trigger in the past.
The UBL kill - harm’s way, no problem.
And... no one in the chain of command looks better for not pulling the trigger. If there is only the people in the chain of command - there is no upside to what they did, only downside.
That’s what leads me to speculate that there has to be an outside decision-maker.
If the “alphabet, state” media buries this, they will be seen for what they are by MANY more people than are currently aware of their collusion with Obama/global-environmental community politics.
Background on the players in new Libyan government.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2951258/posts
“........
1.) To whom did the president give the first of his “three very clear directives”—that is, “make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to?”
2.) How did he transmit this directive to the military and other agencies?
3.) During the time when Americans were under attack, did the president convene a formal or informal meeting of his national security council? Did the president go to the situation room?
4.) During this time, with which members of the national security team did the president speak directly?
5.) Did Obama speak by phone or teleconference with the combatant commanders who would have sent assistance to the men under attack?
6.) Did he speak with CIA director David Petraeus?
7.) Was the president made aware of the repeated requests for assistance from the men under attack? When and by whom?
8.) Did he issue any directives in response to these requests?
9.) Did the president refuse to authorize an armed drone strike on the attackers?
10.) Did the president refuse to authorize a AC-130 or MC-130 to enter Libyan airspace during the attack?
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has asked the White House these questions, and awaits a response.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ten-questions-white-house_657977.html
“.....The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi’s fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.......”
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/50224
Yahoo comments are blowing up with anti-Obama comments on this, as well as anti-MSM comments for the cover up!
Obama is trying to run out the clock but he is being exposed as a liar.
He is as guilty as the rest of them, don’t be deceived by the feigned remorse.
No, it’s not that simple. The POTUS has blood on his hands and like Macbeth, may it haunt what little soul he has until his last breath and into eternity.
Hey, hey
What do you say,
How many Americans
You kill today. (Repeat ad infinitum)
0bambi lied, Americans died. (Repeat ad infinitum)
I read somewhere that Ambassador Stevens may have been overcome by the smoke from the fires that were set. If he died (or appeared to be dead when he was found), that would call for a "Plan B" if this was indeed a set up. That appears to have been to first blame it on the video and now to deny that they had any knowledge that the attack was taking place until it was too late to provide help.
He wasn't concerned about civilians, he sends drones out all the time.
He was concerned about a failed or bloody rescue mission right before the election.
This isn't about the inability to make up one's mind, it is about his own immorality.
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