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Benghazi Index
Posted on 05/06/2013 3:07:51 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
As the weakly protected U.S. diplomatic compound in eastern Libya came under attack the night of Sept. 11, 2012, the deputy head of the embassy in Tripoli 600 miles away sought in vain to get the Pentagon to scramble fighter jets over Benghazi in a show of force that might have averted a second attack on a nearby CIA complex.
Hours later, according to excerpts of the account by the U.S. diplomat, Gregory Hicks, American officials in the Libyan capital sought permission to deploy four U.S. special operations troops to Benghazi aboard a Libyan military aircraft early the next morning. They were told to stand down.
Congressional investigators released a partial transcript of Hicks’s testimony Monday in advance of a hearing Wednesday at which he is scheduled to appear. His remarks are the first public account from a U.S. official who was in Libya at the time of the attacks about the options that were weighed as militants mobbed the American diplomatic outpost and CIA station in Benghazi, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other government employees. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yes, but not eight months after the fact and with just a teensy weensy more interest and fervor.
How does WAPO intend to spin this in zero’s favor? Oh yeah, It’s Bush’s fault.
The libtard comments at WP are all over the map....signaling complete panic. It is amusing to read their pitiful excuses for their pathetic messiah and Hillary.
WOW!
Not Fox, not RUSH, Not WND!
Washington Post!
Well, hillary suffered a concussion, partial amnesia and doesn’t recall anything from that timeframe. Anything blamed on her by others are the despicable acts of political opponents who know she cannot defend herself due to amnesia. /s
How could they have known that ahead of time unless al Qaeda call and tell the DOD that the attack was going to last a certain number of hours?
For all DOD knew, the attack could have continued for days.
I mean, it's as silly an excuse as saying that certain units weren't deployed on D-Day because they couldn't have gotten there before the coast was taken.
Ahead of time, how the heck do they know how long an attack is going to last?
They don't. This statement could be a hindsight thing, but that's as useless to the KIAs as an Obama promise.
I did a search on the New York Times website for “Benghazi” and the last story was January 31, 2013.
It's like a fire department not responding to a house fire because they believe the house will be consumed before they can get there.
I think that comment is going to come back to bite her - and the entire regime, which obviously gave her the talking points - really, really hard.
It’s going to become the slogan in all this. And it’s going to become clear that it wasn’t just the opinion of one dotty, stupid but ambitious Secretary of State, but that said dotty, stupid but ambitious Secretary of State was just speaking policy and defending her boss.
No SOS goes off on their own. It all comes from above. The only question now is whether she will go quietly under the bus or whether she’ll turn on him.
Monday, April 29, 2013
BENGHAZI WHISTLEBLOWERS: Obama, Hillary Lied About Assets That Could Have Saved SEALs, Then Threatened Witnesses
My, my, my. Antique media now faces an interesting dilemma: let Fox News capture all of the Nielsen ratings as Benghazi-gate explodes or attempt to cover it and spin. Either way, they lose:
U.S. Had Assets That Could Have Saved U.S. SEALs
BAIER: The administration has insisted there was no help for the Americans under assault in Libya, none that could arrive in time to change the outcome in Benghazi. Tonight is the first of three exclusive reports charging that claim is just not true.
Because the Special Operator in this piece is fearful of reprisal, we have agreed to conceal his identity. Correspondent Adam Housley has the story.
HOUSLEY: Many Americans are asking indeed, I asked myself. How could this happen? In the seven months since the Benghazi attacks on 9/11, information from the administration has been incomplete at best.
Details and time lines provided by the State Department, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been contradictory and failed to answer many questions.
In December, a State Department review concluded: There simply was not enough time for U.S. military forces to have made a difference: Having said that, it is not reasonable nor feasible to forces at the ready to respond to protect every high risk post in the world.
But members of the military who are monitoring events in Benghazi disagree.
Only a few dozen people in the world know what happened that night and Fox News spoke exclusively with a Special Operator who watched the events unfold and has debriefed those who are part of the response.
SO: I know for a fact that C-110, the UCOM SIF was doing a training exercise not in the region of northern Africa but in Europe. They had the ability to react and respond.
HOUSLEY: The C-110 is a command in extremis force... a 40-man SPECOPS force capable of rapid response and deployment, specifically trained for incidents like the attack in Benghazi. That night, they were training in croatia just three and a half hours away.
SO: We had the ability to load out, get on birds, and fly there at a minimum stage. C-110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in four to six hours from their European theater to react.
HOUSLEY: They would have been there before the second attack.
SO: They would have been there before the second attack. They would have been there at a minimum to provide a quick reaction force that could facilitate their exfill out of the problem situation. Nobody knew how it was going to develop.
And you hear a whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of advisors say hey, we wouldn’t have sent them there because the security was unknown situation.
HOUSLEY: No one knew that?
SO: If it’s an unknown situation, at a minimum you send forces there to facilitate the exfill or medical injuries.
We could have sent a C-130 to Benghazi to provide medical evacuation for the injured.
HOUSLEY: Our source says many connected to Benghazi feel threatened and are afraid to talk. So far confidential sources have fed some information but nobody has come forward publicly on camera until now.
SO: The problem is, you have got guys, in my position you have got guys in Special Pperations community who are — still active and still involved.
And they would be decapitated if they came forward with information that could effect high level commanders.
HOUSLEY: Despite the concern, our confidential source says the community feels there was a betrayal. All the way to the top. And that people on the ground in Benghazi were left to fend for themselves.
SO: I don’t blame them for not coming forward, you know. It’s something that is a risky, especially in a profession to say anything about anything in the realm of politics or that deals with policy.
HOUSLEY: Our source provides insight into how the U.S. government and military reacted from the moment the attack began through the immediate hours after ambassador Chris Stevens went missing. What they were told to do and what not to do as Stephens, Diplomatic Officer Sean Smith and former Special Operations members Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed.
SO: There is a lot of responsibility and onus that needs to be taken up and accounted for.
HOUSLEY: The attack began on September 11th, 2012 at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi and culminated roughly seven hours later at a second location, a CIA annex about one mile away.
While the official responses from Washington have been that the assets could not have made it from benghazi in time that killed Woods and Doherty, there were at least two military units that could have made it in time including the one training in Croatia.
SO: Besides those guys who went in on their own, we had two more assets that could have been there. Two more assets that could have been on the ground. It’s frustrating, upsetting especially being in the community. The hardest thing to deal with in any kind of, you know, dangerous scenario or gun fight, is, you know, we always look to each other to help each other and that’s how we get through situations. It’s not about the assets overhead. It’s about the guys on the ground.
HOUSLEY: He also says as the attack began there were at least 15 Special Forces and highly skilled State Department security staff available in the capital Tripoli who were not dispatched even though they were trained as a quick response force.
Meantime, a group of American reinforcements also in Tripoli, which included the CIA’s global response agent Glen Doherty and seven others took matters into their own hands. This is a little known fact which contradicts the State Department’se report. The team commandeered a small jet and flew to Benghazi while still under fire. Doherty would eventually be killed on the roof along with his friend Tyrone Woods.
SO: These men deserve the highest medal of honor for their action. If it wasn’t for that decision we would be looking at different situation. 20-plus hostages... captured by AQ or you would be looking at a lot of dead Americans dead in Benghazi.
HOUSLEY: We have heard some of these same details from a number of our other sources who have not yet come on camera.
Some of our British sources on the ground that night confirmed. Tomorrow, more of our exclusive interview including the hunt for those responsible or the lack of a hunt.
Further, at least four career intelligence officials say they have been directly threatened by the Obama administration to keep this scandal under wraps.
Obama administration officials threatened whistle-blowers on Benghazi-Lawyer
At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.
Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.
“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”
Toensing declined to name her client... However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information on all three time periods investigators considered relevant to the attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.
“It’s frightening, and they’re doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said... Federal law provides explicit protections for federal government employees who are identified as “whistle-blowers.” The laws aim to ensure these individuals will not face repercussions from their superiors, or from other quarters, in retaliation for their provision of information about corruption or other forms of wrongdoing to Congress, or to an agency’s inspector-general.
Spread this story far and wide. It’s time to break vintage media’s embargo.
It’s time to drag John Boehner out of the bar, wake him up, and name a Special Prosecutor.
This is impeachment material. Impeachment material.
The WAPO would be enciting calls for Bush’s impeachment if this had happened on his watch. They would have been out for blood.
Here’s the deal... if it was finally discovered that Obama was negligent, and even ordered special forces to stand down when they could have protected the mission, he would be liable for impeachment.
But let’s ask ourselves this question — HOW LIKELY IS THAT?
High crimes and misdemeanors is a phrase from the United States Constitution, Article II, Section 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Which one does Obama’s fault come under? High crime or misdemeanor?
Let’s say that got out of the way and Obama gets indicted for high crime or misdemeanor, how can he be impeached?
It can be attained by a simple majority vote in favor of impeachment, by House members present, for the full resolution of the impeachment, or any article of the impeachment.
Once the vote in favor of impeachment has been attained, the House informs the U.S. Senate of the outcome, and then chooses some House members to act as prosecuting attorneys, called “managers”.
The U.S. Senate prepares to try the impeachment case, during which, it will hear the arguments of both sides. In the case of the impeachment of a U.S. President, the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the proceedings. In order to convict the defendant in an impeachment trial, the hearing requires
1.) a vote in favor of conviction equal to or exceeding two-thirds of the members of the U.S. Senate present, and
2.) a quorum of a simple majority of U.S. Senators. According to Article 1, § 3 of the U.S. Constitution: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.
This is going to be a tall order. First, the GOP will have to take over the Senate in 2014. If the impeachment occurs before that, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY Obama will be removed from office via impeachment.
How much does anybody want to bet this person backs off from the accusation before testifying before Congress?
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