Posted on 01/14/2014 7:07:53 AM PST by SeekAndFind
To some extent we knew this already — Leon Panetta said so in open testimony, to which I’ll return later — but James Rosen at Fox confirms this understanding at the highest levels of the Obama administration within minutes of the attack. No one seriously thought it was a demonstration that had turned into a riot, despite the spin offered in the days after the attack left four Americans dead. And that leaves a lot of questions as to the lack of response:
Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.
Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.
According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham — who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 — said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center. …
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”
The transcript reads as follows:
WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”
HAM: “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”
WENSTRUP: “And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”
HAM: “Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”
Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was him who informed the president that “there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi.” “Secretary Panetta, do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?” asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. “There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack,” Panetta replied.
Furthermore, the communication from the US military in Libya made clear from the start that this was a an attack, not a riot:
WESTRUP: “So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack -”
BRISTOL: “Yes, sir.”
WENSTRUP: “– on the United States?”
BRISTOL: “Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack.”
We have already known that Panetta got briefed from the start that this was a terrorist attack, from Panetta’s own lips. Presumably, that’s what he then told Barack Obama. What happened in between to cause them to claim it was a demonstration that got out of control? One charitable possibility is that the State Department or CIA might have claimed otherwise based on faulty intel — it happens, especially in the fog of war — or it could be that someone concocted that story to give them political cover for the lack of preparedness that this event demonstrated.
The Fox report also debunks the rumor that General Carter Ham received a stand-down order that night. As the classified testimony confirms, the American military was completely unprepared to deal with a terrorist attack in the region that night:
The ‘average’ American doesn’t know crap about Benghazi because the MSM doesn’t cover it in a way that would evoke interest.
Don’t blame us for the biased MSM...
Egypt will no doubt get the facts out of Al Haddad, but they won’t release it, they will extort kazillions from Obummer to keep it to themselves. And if Hillary runs and gets in, Egypt will help her run for office, coz’ then if she gets in, they can extort kazillions from her to keep it to themselves. Throw the bums out.
He was watching his plan unravel before his very eyes.
It’s really not that complicated.
For the election, Obama needed to show that he could be tough on Islam.
He planned to have the Ambassador kidnapped and then he would get tough on the terrorists and they would give the Ambassador back. Obama a hero, election in the bag.
He stripped away all the security to make it easy. Problem was that some Navy Seals showed up and started kicking some Muslim butt. Terrorists figured they were set up and the real plan was to wipe them out. They thought that Obama was trying to be the hero by defending the Ambasador.
Things spin out of control, Ambassador is abused and killed Muslin style. Obama and Hillary have to go into spin and lie mode.
It seems to me that the facts of what happened seem to fit well into this scenario.
Mmmmmm.......maybe not.
LET'S STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE In 2009, Obama made a "Democrat Smart Power" suck-up speech in Cairo----"apologizing" for America's historical role in the Middle East. By snubbing Mubarak, Obama set the stage for the Egyptian president's overthrow by the Islamic mob.
When the worst-case scenario happened, when Obama's personal choice---Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi, was elected president----Obama sap-happily sent his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to Cairo to personally kiss-up to Morsi....perhaps at that time hatching their plans to destroy Westen civiliation in compliance w/ Muslim dictates.
Obama's treacherous ill-advised component of US foreign policy----sucking up to the very people who want to kill us and destroy our churches. He portrayed teeming Muslim majorities there as "victims of Western colonialism and Cold War policies," stupidly promoting American-style democracy for these conflicting cultures w/ thousands of years of religious and territorial factionalism.
OBOBO'S SUCKUP "The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars," Obama said in the June 2009 speech in Cairo. "More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies, without regard to their own aspirations."
Fast forward to 2013: the savage Muslim Brotherhood torched some 63 Egyptian churches and many Christian businesses. Obama ignored the bloodbath and spent the crisis dining out, golfing, power-partying, and vacationing in exclusive Martha’s Vineyard on the taxpayers' dime.
=============================================
During the post-Morsi crisis, vacationing Boobamba phoned Gen al-Sisi from M/V. But al-Sisi refused to take the call, knowing Boobamba planned to order the general to call off his beating back the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-sisi proceeded to eviscerate the M/B. He is revered in Egypt b/c workaday Egyptians see the M/B as a terrorist organization (as we do). Egyptians are moving to vote Al sisi into the office of President----a prospect abhorred by Hillary and Obama who desperately want M/B Morsi back in.
Very, v-e-r-y plausible....story also accounts for SofS Hillary's strange statements....which seemed to acknowledge this Machiavellian plot.
Benghazi was so ancient history.
Everything is still Bush’s fault.
bttt
So, He’s a liar, She’s a liar and they are liars!
You got it!
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.