Petraeus and Panetta Speak—But Not the President

the Weekly Standard ^ | 10/31/12 | WILLIAM KRISTOL

[Nachum]

Seven weeks later, the White House still hasn't explained what President Obama did and didn't do during the seven hours of the attack on Benghazi on September 11. And there's been no response from the White House to questions asked by senators or THE WEEKLY STANDARD or David Ignatius in the Washington Post.

We have, to be sure, heard from some government officials. But the information they've provided raises still more questions.

CIA director David Petraeus authorized a statement pointedly saying that "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate"—which strongly suggests that Petraeus believes or knows that officials in other parts of the government may have told subordinates "not to help those in need."

[Nachum]

You can run, but you can't hide

[Nachum]

The list, Ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

http://www.nachumlist.com/

[GregNH]

The Weeklystandard site is down......move along.

[P-Marlowe]

"No one at any level in the CIA"

Operative words.

The implication is that obviously SOMEBODY told the military and the CIA operatives not to intevene, it just wasn't anyone at the CIA.

[blueyon]

The Link states.........”Service Unavailable

The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

Wonder if it is service overload or what....

[Mr Ramsbotham]

We're the battling bastards of Benghazi,
Fighting fierce, like Kamikaze,
Alone against a ruthless foe,
Obama and his sidekick Joe.
And nobody gives a damn.

[mojito]

“Panetta’s statement only makes sense if there were those in the military or elsewhere who considered or urged deploying forces into harm's way, and that those individuals were overruled because of the lack of real-time information. Take another look at what Panetta said: “As a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.” In other words, Panetta is acknowledging forces could have been put at risk, but that a decision was made not to do so.”

[GregNH]

It’s back up now.

[blueunicorn6]

If you’ve done things right and you tell the truth, you can give the information right away. If you’ve screwed things up and then lied about it, you have to run a bunch of “What if?” scenarios to see which lie plays best.

[blueyon]

Thanks GregNH for letting me know it’s up again

To All, Something in my opinion is not right with this story:

It states Obama called Netanyahu at 8:18pm ET. Israel is 6 hours AHEAD of us, so that would make it 2:18 am in Israel. If the call was for 1 hour, it ended at 3:18 am. Does anyone here really think Netanyahu would stay up at that hour of the night just to talk to Obama? I don’t! And why would they even be told about that phone call..........What is going on

[Servant of the Cross]

LENO: “Well, ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ is back - not for gays in the military. It's President Obama's new policy for questions about Libya. Don't ask, don't tell."

[throwback]

So Kristol is saying Panetta was either following orders or he was usurping presidential power. Still think Republicans should call him up for a committee hearing and suggest he resign if he usurped authority, or let them know the decision wasn't made by him by was in fact made by Obama.

[ozdragon]

What would have happened if the request for went up the chain of command through;Eisenhower or Patton or Bradley or Walt or Krulak or Truscot or MacArthur or Puller, etc?
My guess lots of dead jihadies and maybe a rescued Ambassador.

[DallasDeb]

What the heck are we doing training Seals and PJs for years if not to put them in harms way, without knowing the full picture. Besides, what were they getting from the drones and the Americans on the ground?

[DallasDeb]

Betcha there’s plenty of angry Special Forces at Africom who didn’t get to use their skills to save Americans and kick butt.

[DallasDeb]

#5: I heard on the radio Monday that lots of internet sites have been slowed down, but no one knows how, who, or why.

[FARS]

noticeably disrupted. As are my cell phone’s browser and emails

[Smokin' Joe]

I’m on a drilling location, routed through satellite to a server in Alberta, and everything has been outrageously slow or unresponsive.

[Son House]

Here’s the 3rd debate where Obama says when the initial phone call came, he gave an order to “secure those Americans”;

TRANSCRIPT: Presidential debate on foreign policy at Lynn University
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/transcript-presidential-debate-on-foreign-policy-at-lynn-university/

Obama “Now with respect to Libya, as I indicated in the last debate, when we received that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one, that we did everything we could to secure those Americans who were still in harm’s way;”

Initial phone call to Washington(which would have been approx 9:40pm at the consulate);

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/10/198791.htm

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL:“...I neglected to mention from the top that that agent from the top of this incident, or the very beginning of this incident, has been on the phone. He had called the quick reaction security team, he had called the Libyan authorities, he had called the Embassy in Tripoli, and he had called Washington.”

[EBH]

OMG...I’m in Cleveland and my internet service, phone, and TV service has been horribly disrupted.

It took 3 attempts to connect to a friend via phone and even then it hung up on me just after telling her I’d try again over the weekend.