Wow. Folks, get a grip.
If Patraeus says he didn’t make the call, then who did?
What more does he need to say?
We do not want a situation where the director of the CIA goes rogue on the president. He’s limiting his input in the interest of maintaining that distance.
Congress is where this belongs. If he’s called, he can answer their questions in a formal setting. That’s how I’d rather see it play out.
Thank you, DoughtyOne! People don't realize that General Petraeus was not in the chain of command of the Benghazi incident.
The senior combatant commander was General Carter Ham, Commander of US Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. Gen. Ham has considerable assets at his command, including a highly capable In-Extremis Force that was forward deployed at NAS Sigonella, Sicily - just two hours from Benghazi. Gen. Ham's command center was monitoring the flash event in real time, immediately evaluating its armed rescue options. And here's the most important fact...
As the combatant commander, Gen. Ham answers ONLY to the Secretary of Defense and the President, in that order. Leon Panetta and Barack Obama are the only two men on earth who could have ordered General Ham to stand down.