Posted on 02/12/2014 12:37:05 PM PST by Nachum
The U.S. military had a multitude of forces in the region surrounding Libya when terrorists attacked the Special Mission in Benghazi and murdered four Americans, according to an unclassified Navy map obtained by Judicial Watch this week.
The map features the Navy fleet positions in the North Africa Area of Responsibility (AOR) on September 11, 2012, the day Islamic jihadists raided the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the first diplomat to be killed overseas in decades, and three other Americans were murdered in the violent ambush.
Dozens of vessels were stationed in the region on that day, including two aircraft carriers (Dwight D. Eisenhower and Enterprise), four amphibious ships, 13 destroyers, three cruisers and more than a dozen other smaller Navy boats as well as a command ship. Carriers are warships, the powerhouse of the naval fleet with a full-length flight deck for aircraft operations. During the Benghazi attack, two carriers were based to the east in the Arabian Sea, the Navy map shows.
Two amphibious assault ships (Iwo Jima and Gunston Hill) were situated to the east in the Gulf of Oman and one (New York) was in the Gulf of Aden, the map shows. A fourth (Fort McHenry) was located on the west side of the African continent in the Atlantic Ocean. Amphibious ships resemble small aircraft carriers and have air-craft strips for vertical and short take-offs and landings. The destroyers are scattered throughout the region, but the closest appear to be four (Cole, Forrest Sherman, Jason Dunham and Aboon) in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya. The rest of the fleet includes cruisers, minesweepers, patrols and a command ship.
The map was provided to Judicial Watch by retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Randall R. Schmidt, who is investigating how the military responded
(Excerpt) Read more at judicialwatch.org ...
The traitorous bastard wasn’t available- he was in a very private conference with Doug Shulman.
9/11/2012 seems to be a ‘perfect storm ‘ of U.S. Gov /Mil incompetence and negligence / neglect . For which very few ( if any) have been directly held responsible .
No carrier in the Med to back up any hot spots ? With all the Arab Spring BS brewing? No QRF’s on fast stand-by ?
Read the House Majority Staff Benghazi Report ( in full)
Heads must roll . From the bottom to the top . This is the downfall of a U.S. President and eliminates all possibility that another should ever stand as a candidate .
Useless for the mission profile needed. The Iwo Jima by itself has a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), more than capable of doing the mission (I did 2 tours in such). But they were too far off.
Interesting that State didn't ask for a Marine unit to be close by with they type of threats they were receiving.
Exactly. What difference does it make? The GOP has already vindicated the administration. They might as well campaign for hillary.
Who was 30 to 40 minutes away?
Have they? ...or did the MSM twist a term of art to mean something it doesn’t?
An order to stay in place is not an order to stand down...but it still stops the unit from moving to assist.
What do you mean by “nearby.” Souda Bay is 300 nautical miles from Benghazi.
NO ONE KNEW HOW MUCH TIME WAS NEEDED
unless they are part of the treason.
jets
True enough, but I don’t see how any destroyers could have been used in a timely fashion.
Jets from where?
now that you are asking me to nail down fleet movements on and before that night .... I’ll digress.
Here is a video of Rep. Chaffetz saying that Gen. Ham, commander of AFRICOM at that time, told him that assets were near enough to help and ready to go.There is no doubt whatsoever that the assets were in motion preparing to receive an order to go.AFRICOM leader General Carter Ham was never given the order to secure the consulate in Benghazi. Youtube 1:43
Adm. James Lyons (Ret.) on Growing Benghazi Scandal
ADMIRAL LYONS: …All those comforting words that “We don’t want to put our forces at risk.” We had people at risk—they were crying for help! In a situation, you go with the resources you have available—and, in this particular case, we did have that 130-man Marine force recon team sitting there at Sigonella. Even if I only got 50 of them over there, that would have been significant in turning the situation around. We may not have been able to save the ambassador, but we certainly could have saved those other two SEALs that were over on the annex.
ADMIRAL LYONS: In perpetuating this lie, we also had administration officials lying to Congressional committees. That’s a felony. So, “What difference does it make?” It makes all the difference in the world. You cannot flaunt the truth here, just walk away from it and, basically, tell the American public to stuff it. That’s not acceptable.
The point on the organizing the two Marine anti-terrorist teams in Rota, that was good to go ahead and stand ’em up. What I find incomprehensible: The first team, it took them 23 hours to go a few hundred miles from Rota to Tripoli. I could go around the world in 23 hours, so that makes absolutely no sense to me.
In-extremis forces are prepared to deploy 24/7/365 and have been since the early '80s. Here is the testimony of a former SEAL who was part of one of those teams in the early days. On FR we know him as Travis McGee.
To: tobyhillLong ago I was a SEAL officer and I attended many joint and combined operational planning meetings in the USA, abroad, and on ships at sea. This type of rescue mission is called a “NEO” operation, for Non-combatant Evacuation Operation. Every embassy and consulate has and practices all kinds of emergency evac plans, in concert with the US military.
For example, Marines and SEALs practice NEO ops prior to deploying on every float, as a VERY high priority mission. They involve full dress-rehearsals, with civilian role players, helos, landing craft, rounding up stranded stragglers, opfor ambushes, role-playing “angry mobs,” fighting your way to LZs or even beaches while protecting a gaggle of civilians down to babies etc. Conducting successful NEO ops is a TOP TOP TOP military and state department mission priority. I cannot emphasize this enough. NEO ops are planned and practiced over and over and over.
When the alarm goes off worldwide that an embassy or consulate is being attacked, the entire U.S. military swings into rescue mode, without waiting for any orders from the White House. The military does all of the operational planning and begins to execute the rescue op.
The one thing they CAN’T do is cross an international border without permission from POTUS. So the US Military will be inbound full-steam-ahead to make the rescue, and all they need from POTUS is a “proceed” order. In this case, they got a “stand down” instead.
This is at the POTUS level, it is not a decision taken at State. State and the military (JCS) should be in the Situation Room with POTUS soon after a critical incident like this begins, so all decisions can be made in real time. (I have heard nowhere that POTUS went into the Situation Room at all. Apparently he went to the Oval Office briefly, but not down to the Situation Room, where the “war planning” screens, full staffs and commo tools are all located for dealing with a major crisis.)
But if POTUS punts after a brief Oval Office meeting with Dempsey and Hillary and goes upstairs to the family quarters....the stranded Americans will die.
Only POTUS can give the order to cross international borders. Only POTUS can allow US warplanes to give air support to Americans battling on the ground in a foreign country. If POTUS makes himself unavailable, the Americans will die.
Even the VEEP or Secretary of State cannot make that call. The VEEP can only do it if the POTUS is determined to be medically unable to perform his functions. If the POTUS goes upstairs and turns off his phone, there is nothing anybody can do about it. Nothing. And the besieged Americans will die.
On Friday an anonymous Pentagon insider (”Doug”) called into Rush with a lot of new details about this disgraceful fiasco. But what we really need now is for a high-ranking officer with insider knowledge to go public, risk his pension and career, and tell the truth.
The blame for this humiliating and shameful national disgrace is pointing directly at the POTUS, and America needs to know why the inbound rescue operation was aborted.
12 posted on Saturday, October 27, 2012 8:11:02 AM by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
More from Travis McGee...
Jets could have been sent from Italy, but we would have needed Obama to approve entry into Libyan airspace without their approval.
My biggest problem with Benghazi was that we were even there. Not only were the facilities below required security standards, but the fact that we could not depend on the host government to provide the needed protection should have caused us to leave. The host government is our primary defense and we should never have a diplomatic facility where that is not the case. The host government had ample time, over 8 hours, to send protection to the annex after the attack on the mission.
And there is our answer of whom had the authority to order a Stand Down. Have no doubt we could have rescued those four Men. zer0 had to continue though to set up what he was promised which was a deal. All that was done and said from the zer0 crowd was simply a ruse. The media still perplexes me though. Soon it will be their journalists being killed. That deal will probably wait though till a republican can be blamed. moslems are stupid but they play both sides against the middle and the moslems perceive the middle to be the media, in our nation.
My agreement ... somewhere back around the beginning of Egypt's ruckus, I was for and am still for leaving the entire area and pulling all money from them and forcing them to fend for themselves. We eventually will have to return but let them kill each other for a while before they eventually get back around to us ... is my theory. So therefore ... we are in greater agreement the more we type.
From the documents I have read along with published reports, it was apparent that the host government was incapable of providing the requisite security support. It was acknowledged long before the attack. We should not have been there.
Egypt is another matter. They did and could provide security when requested.
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