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.
Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were in Benghazi as part of a security contractor force.
On September 11, they were ensconced in the safety of an annex location in another part of the city when they got word that the main consulate building was under fire and the diplomats there -- with an armed force of only nine people -- were overwhelmed by the deteriorating situation.
Doherty and Woods, along with other security personnel, left the secure annex and made their way to the chaotic scene, rounding up the consulate staff who were under attack and guiding them back to the second safe building.
It has been reported that as many as 30 personnel were rescued and escorted back to the CIA safe house.
SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE INDIVIDUALS?
They are ALL witnesses to what happened at both locations.
Are they being held incommunicado somewhere, like at a military installation in Europe?
Have they all been threatened and told not to speak to anyone....including their families?
Why is NO ONE even mentioned them or made the least effort to contact them???
Unbelievable that not ONE would have said anything to anyone and word of what happened would not have leaked out by now....unless someone put the fear of God in all of them.
The newest AP coverage of the attack.
Hillary, Obama and Company think that all they have to do is confuse, obfuscate, divert, deceive, and stall . . and if they do it long enough . . everyone will tire of it and they’ll be free to move on to the next “crisis” in peace. - Collateral damage; you know, locked up in “lock boxes” and stored in corners of these people’s heads.
It’s worse....if anything could be......and if any of the below is for real......
http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2012/10/analgate-final-hours-of-chris-stevens.html
The Omertà Administration [cherry-pick, manipulate and stonewall the truth]
Agreed!
In either case, it qualifies as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
-——He takes too long to make up his mind—its just that simple.-——
His history shows he can not make a decision. He will not make a decision. It really is that simple.
At root, he is a coward that fears for his own hide in all circumstances.
He should fear above all......... reelection.
Excellent question! That has always puzzled me, too. Supposedly, when help did arrive, they actually hadn’t even sent enough vehicles to evacuate the large number of people there (some 37 people, IIRC).
So where are they now?
And
Col. Ken ALLARD: Obama knew about the attack, ignored three requests for help
Yes, where are they and WHO are they?
To me, Panetta looks like Jim Henson Muppet and likely as smart as one.
Truth be told, Valerie Jarrett probably made the call....
Leon Panetta never before had any hesitancy to use DRONE STRIKES!
EXACTLEEE
30 personnel were rescued and escorted back to the CIA safe house.
SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE INDIVIDUALS?
/////////////////
THEY ARE BEING REMINDED OF THE MONEY THEY LOSE IF THEY TALK.
Panetta is doing what he is supposed to do, what they train you for in Military academy. You fall in your sword if dear leaders asks you. My brother wrote a paper on it at the Naval Academy. It doesnt matter whether you agree with what leadership asks, a good solider follows orders.
Panetta was following orders from the Top. We all know Obama is a micromanager and he will pull the trigger on any operation anywhere that directly benefits himself and his image. That is why he had no issue going forth with the mission to kill Bin Laden, a mission that was both dangerous and possibly illegal. In Libya, it was a total loss whether they lived or died so they rather let them die and spin a story. Without a direct political benefit, Obama simply ignored it and went back on the campaign trail. Sending a rescue team was an admission of guilt on what was really going on there and diplomacy was not the real mission.
“Were they denied requests for help during the attack?” he asked... .
[snip]
“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened,” the president again said. “I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”First of all this is the first time I have heard Zippo saying this. Second, everything he says after the first directive is in past tense. He is cornered and has no telepromter. I believe he was AWAL after the 6PM email that stated that the attack had stopped and the consulate cleared.
I say this for two reasons. At 10:00PM Hillary released a press statement that reads;
I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.In her statement she mentions speaking with President Magariaf no doubt asking him for military support because POTUS was AWAL and she could not order Military action. It is being reported today on Fox that the request for help at the annex was denied because the station chief was waiting for Lybian help that of course never came.This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.
Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.
In light of the events of today, the United States government is working with partner countries around the world to protect our personnel, our missions, and American citizens worldwide.
Here's how a leader keeps it from happening again: while the attack is in progress, flatten everything within a couple blocks of the embassy and kill anything that moves in that zone.
I guaran-damn-tee you that no one anywhere will be eager to be in the van of any future attack on US embassies or territory.
Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice.
See above.
A GREAT soldier upholds his Oath to protect and defend the Constitution against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.
I'd like to think Panetta is smart enough to know the Nuremberg defense, "I vas ust followink orders" still doesn't cut it.
ISSA, et al, should issue some kind of Protection Order for all of them that will come forth. Protection from prosecution or whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this.
Better that Panetta and others go the way of Benedict Arnold and be isolated to wherever, there to be forgotten & shunned by all, than to be a participant in the total destruction of America.
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