For goodness sakes, focusing on such trivialities as the model of LAD on one guy's rifle! Straining gnats, while ignoring the elephants in the room.
Benghazi's Smoking Gun: Only President Can Grant Cross-Border Authority (PJMedia link)
Posted on 11/04/2012 4:34:00 AM PST by maggief
Sources who have debriefed the team that was at the CIA annex the night of the attack in Benghazi say that the CIA operators from the Global Response Staff, or GRS, were equipped with Mark 48 machine guns and had two types of laser capability. Each weapon had both a “passive” as well as a “visible” laser that could be used against the Libyan attackers.
Fox News has learned the guns were fitted with PEQ-15 lasers. The “passive” laser is not visible to the naked eye but can help team members identify hostile forces when the shooter is wearing NODS, or Night Observation Device attached to their helmet. The visible laser system places a red dot on the attacker and warns the attacker not to shoot, encouraging them to flee the scene. US troops often use the visible laser to scare children or other civilians who find themselves in the middle of combat activity. When civilians see the laser they often back off in order not to be shot.
The GRS team that was present at the CIA annex provided security for the CIA station, as they do around the world. They are highly trained in countersurveillance, close target reconnaissance and in depth reconnaissance. Enemy fighters have learned in Afghanistan and Iraq to use their cell phones to follow or intercept these “passive” lasers without having night vision or NODS.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Libya Attack Shows Pentagon’s Limits in Region
EXCERPT
On the day of the attacks on the mission and a nearby annex in Benghazi, General Ham and other commanders were in Washington for a series of long-planned meetings. The Pentagon’s national military command center distributed a report around 4:30 p.m., 50 minutes after the assault started, that there had been violence in Benghazi and that the ambassador could not be located.
President Obama was informed about the attack at 5 p.m. by his national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, at the start of a meeting at the White House with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Libya was not the only worry. There were also protests at the United States’ embassies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.
In the meeting, Mr. Obama ordered the Pentagon to begin “mobilizing all available military assets to respond to a range of contingencies in Libya and other countries in the region,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
But the administration was not well positioned to respond quickly. On the night of the attack, the Pentagon was able to divert an unarmed Predator drone operating 90 miles away to Benghazi, and the C.I.A. later used it to help plan an escape route for the surviving Americans.
Two military officers working at the embassy in Tripoli volunteered to join C.I.A. reinforcements who arrived in Benghazi early the next morning, just before a series of deadly mortar rounds struck the agency’s annex in Benghazi and killed two C.I.A. security contractors.
But other military forces were too far away or could not be mobilized in time. The closest AC-130 gunship, a devastating and accurate weapon against insurgents in urban areas, was in Afghanistan, a senior official said.
There are no armed drones within range of Libya. The closest fly out of Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, and were not in range of Benghazi. There was no Marine expeditionary unit — a large seaborne force with its own helicopters — in the Mediterranean Sea. American F-16 fighters in Europe were not on alert, and General Ham concluded they would not have been useful in a confused fight in a major Arab city.
For goodness sakes, focusing on such trivialities as the model of LAD on one guy's rifle! Straining gnats, while ignoring the elephants in the room.
Benghazi's Smoking Gun: Only President Can Grant Cross-Border Authority (PJMedia link)
but i found this the most mind blowing statement from the government:
According to military sources, Libyan authorities have not given the US military permission to fly armed drones over populated areas like Benghazi.
Huh? we need permission to park military assets overhead to protect our people in Libya? Libya?
Incompetence and dereliction of duty no know bounds apparently
———to use their cell phones to follow or intercept these “passive” lasers -——
I do not understand this concept. How does a cell phone intercept a laser?
the cell phone camera can see the infared laser, thats what the red stuff is you see before you take the picture.
A meeting for the lap dogs only in which they are told what to report
in which they explain that at 5:15 a.m. (7 hrs and 28 minutes after the attack on the consulate began) five mortars are fired at the annex, three of them striking the roof and killing Woods and Doherty. The US military says that two unarmed Predators were overhead Benghazi that night and providing one stream of video back to Washington beginning at 11:11 p.m. (1 hr and 24 minutes) after the attack began.
Which is it? There were drones there were not any drones.
Ping
NYT:
“There will have to be a reassessment of the priorities and resources for Africom, given the responsibilities it has in one of the most volatile regions of the world,” said Jack Keane, the retired general who served as the Army vice chief of staff. “And certainly a quick response force, with air and ground capabilities, has to be an important part of those resources.”
Africom has no quick-reaction force?
If you are taking a picture or video with your “smart phone” or other camera that has an LCD viewfinder, the CCD lens of the device is sensitive to the invisible infrared light and the laser beam from the otherwise “invisible to the naked eye” designator will show up plain as day on the LCD viewfinder.
Look through your digital camera at the business end of your TV remote for a practical demonstration of what’s being described by these references to enemy combatants using cameras.
So let me get this right, it’s Not the commander in chief, it’s YouTube videos and cell phones? “Come on man!
Ahh..... I’ll try it
Thanks
This is utter nonsense, another deflection and smokescreen.
The best-trained and most capable group in the theater is designated the QRF. If the emergency was in Benghazi, that QRF would go. My best understanding at this time is that group was a USMC Force Recon company, and they were moved to Sigonella to be closer to Benghazi if a military rescue was ordered.
No military rescue was ordered. Obama did not have to "stand them down," all he had to do was passively NOT give cross-border authority.
Former SEAL: Obama Never Gave ‘Cross-Border Authority’ Orders (Breitbart link)
That, in a nutshell, tells you everything you need to know about the people responsible for this incident.
More spin. If this is true, this could’ve been said on September 12th. Why was it not? It took them this long to cook up a plausible story. But, what about Sigonella? This still does not hold water. They want us to think that the US military is that ill-prepared? We only have one C-130 gunship? Come on! This stretches credibility.
This is at least the second time Team Kenya has locked FNC out of a Libya briefing. What a despicable bunch they are.
Once again, Fox News gets excluded from a regime briefing. This is outrageous! Lots of questions to ask from this report..but here is one:
“According to military sources, Libyan authorities have not given the US military permission to fly armed drones over populated areas like Benghazi. However, for some time the unmanned aerial drones that have been watching Libya’s chemical weapons sites did have permission to be armed.”
If we know where the chemical weapons are...why haven’t we secured or removed them yet? That is crazy!
More dereliction of duty and/or treason IMHO.
"It's not a scandal if we don't report it."
What was the mission in Benghazi prior to the attacks? What is the timeline/response (or lack thereof) from each “representative”/bureaucrat during the slaughter? Why the pre-meditated, coordination and amplification of lies as to the root cause of the event?
Many, many more questions not asked, answers not forthcoming.
TREASON - aid, comfort and weapons to enemies combined with direct attacks on amendment 1.
TREASON - like this republic has never seen before...in real-time, continuous, ongoing, unresolved.
FUBO
Ftheexcusemakers
What representation?
“—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. “
Counterterrorism team not called upon to help....
Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.
A third potential responder from a counter-terror force stationed in Europe says components of AFICOM — the military’s Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany — were working on course of action during the assault. But no plan was put to use.
“Forces were positioned after the fact but not much good to those that needed it,” the military source told CBS News.
“The response process was isolated at the most senior level,” says an official referring to top officials in the executive branch. “My fellow counterterrorism professionals and I (were) not consulted.”
What I get from the Fox News article and other reports from the major news outlets, is the impression that , somehow the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and EVERYONE involved with the months of run up through the attack were merely incompetent and unprepared. Is this the picture they’re now trying to paint? That to me, is utterly preposterous that all of these agencies were THAT INCOMPETENT at the same time where the Benghazi consulate was concerned!
Furthermore, the US military is the most formidable fighting force on the planet (BAD-ASS)). As you well know, they are prepared for every possible contingency—and even the ones that “aren’t possible”. I believe as you do. These forces are assembled, equipped and trained for such an event as Benghazi, were ready to go, but were stopped cold by the lack of orders needed from the very top.
There were drones, but there were no ARMED drones.
Could the drone be crashed into the mortar location? Or is the price of a drone more than Obama is willing to pay for the lives of Americans?
To me, it’s still all about cross-border authority not being given.
Nothing I’ve seen yet cannot be understood within the logic-prism of no CBA being granted. Nothing.
I keep waiting for a talking head to bring it up. Until they do, they indicate to me they don’t truly understand the politica/military context of the failure to send a MILITARY rescue mission to Benghazi.
The pathetic ad-hoc CIA “self rescue” sent from Tripoli was not bound by CBA rules, those assets were already “in country,” and at the disposal of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli.
But the QRF in Sigonella (if that is a true story) could not move toward Libyan air space without POTUS and only POTUS granting CBA, within actual orders.
These orders, if they exist, can be produced at any time.
Occam’s Razor tells me no execute orders or CBA were given, or they would have produced the proof long ago.
When you have an unloaded gun you can still use it as a club!
When I saw that I wondered what the heck we were doing there if the regime we installed would not let us do what is necessary to protect people ON WHAT IS LEGALLY CONSIDERED OUR OWN SOIL. With “friends” like that who needs enemies? If this is true, we knew far ahead of time that we could never keep our people safe - even before finding out at least a month ahead of time that the Libyan regime was not doing a thing to keep our people safe, and finding out the morning of 9-11 that the police (which is headed by an Ansar al Islam and Al Qaeda linked guy!) were even casing the inside of the complex in preparation for an attack!
The Libyan security for the complex was the February 17th Brigade, which is an Islamist group but considered the best that we could do to bridge the gap between the terrorists/Islamists and the so-called “freedom lovers” that we were led to believe we were going in to help. The best we can do in a country we just liberated is a group of Islamists (who, by definition, have the goal of instituting sharia, which violates everything the US Constitution stands for)?
We should not have been there. The US government had every indication that we should not have been there. Before the US ousted Ghadaffi, Ghadaffi had renounced terrorism and was actually one of the biggest helpers in reporting known terrorism. We were not in fear of any of Ghadaffi’s weapons when he was in charge. Now we’ve got 20,000 Manpads that are each capable of shooting down a commercial airliner, and at BEST we don’t know where they are (at worst, we’ve been giving them to Islamist terrorists in Syria and/or they have been distributed to terrorists all over the world, ready to use at any time).
Something else that stinks: Why is our CIA handing out timelines to media but blocking out Fox, which has been talking to eyewitnesses and could confirm the facts if they were accurate? How do you have a press event and cherry-pick only certain media allies to have access to that? That is EXACTLY what Saddam Hussein did; it’s written in the extensive notes that were recovered after he was ousted. CNN was his weapon against the US, Britain, and his own people.
Our government is acting just like Saddam Hussein’s.
No, Predators do not have a kamikazi dive bomber mode. And it’s too valuable up above. When the 25-odd Americans finally fled to the airport, it was critical that they have that eye in the sky.
The “legally considered our own soil” part might be problematic. Now, as far as I’m concerned, even an “unofficial” U.S. outpost should be protected 100% all the way.
But the legal weasels parsing for the White House will very likely be able to point out that neither the “annex” or the so-called “consulate” were on any official list of diplomatic missions.
Mind you, it would matter to me, Reagan, or either Bush. We’d go in guns-blazing to save Americans.
But the Obama weasels will look for any excuse to cover up Obama’s dereliction of duty.
And the rest of the media is letting that happen without complaining? That tells you what lapdogs they are right there.
Apparently, they are all so stupid that they are unable to draw the obvious conclusion that if the Obama WH can do that to FNC, they can do it to any of them.
Expletive delete.
Our enemies thank you for that information.
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_Benghazi.htm
So, what you are saying, if I understand right, is that only the President could give the orders that would allow US military forces to cross the border, or go into, Libya. Biden, Panetta, Dempsey and Ham could all talk about it, but only Obama could actually say that American military forces could go into Libya. Is that right? I realize that you are writing for professionals and journalists, but a lot of people here don’t have your experience with military and clandestine matters and need perhaps a simpler explanation.
Wasn’t the second one available, the first out of fuel. Couldn’t the drone running low on fuel have “landed” on the mortar team if it didn’t have a “dive bomer mode”? Not trying to be a “wise guy” but it seems like some kind of “out of box” response may have helped. If painting a laser on someone is used to make them run away, seems like a drone buzzing might cause aiming issues for a mortar team. I obviously don’t know anything about what I am asking, that is why I am asking you. Are you saying there is no way the low on fuel drone COULD have be used other than as a camera platform? If YOU were in control of the drone and saw YOUR team under fire from a mortar position, YOU would has simply flown away?
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_Benghazi.htm
They can shutdown those cellphones in several ways... and they need to start training to do so.
LLS
First of all, we don’t know squat about the mortar team. It seems quite unlikely to me that Ty Woods on the roof was in direct line-of-sight of a martar team at all. Mortars are indirect fire weapons, it’s their safety to NOT be in sight of the target. A spotter forward corrects fire.
We are taking a half-dozen factoids, perhaps correctly or incorrectly jotted down by a few reporters who managed to talk to some of the other evacuees from Benghazi.
I have seen this for decades and decades. Fragmentary reporter jottings spun into all-encompassing theories.
No, a Predator will not be used to crash-land on a mortar team. No way. The eye in the sky is MUCH MUCH MUCH more valuable up above, than to be thrown away on a low-odds chance at a mobile mortar team. A team which can run away or be replaced by another team somewhere else at any time.
WIthout that eye in the sky, it’s very likely NONE of the Americans would have managed to escape to freedom. Nothing else can tell the escape convoy, “Turn now! THere is a checkpoint three blocks ahead around the corner!”
“There are no armed drones within range of Libya. The closest fly out of Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, and were not in range of Benghazi. There was no Marine expeditionary unit — a large seaborne force with its own helicopters — in the Mediterranean Sea. American F-16 fighters in Europe were not on alert, and General Ham concluded they would not have been useful in a confused fight in a major Arab city.”
WTF NOT?!
LLS
Drones all have missile racks. Armed or unarmed is a simple decision to make. The drone is there, the missiles are there. 2+2=4.
But it takes a POTUS decision to change the standing ROE and send an ARMED Predator over Libya. Which he could have done. Or sent armed F-16s from Italy in one hour. Etc.
See “Cross-Border Authority.”
I am getting so tired of hammering this point over and over and over.
Here's a very simple demonstration: The "non-visible" lasers are infrared, or IR lasers. Your TV remote control also uses infrared LEDs to send commands to your TV.
Take your cell phone camera, and point it at the end of your remote. Then press a button on the remote. Your naked eye sees nothing, but your cell phone camera sees the LED blinking white.
Exactly right. See #3 and read the PJ Media article that I wrote.
There may have been standing orders or ROE permitting unarmed Predators to enter Libyan air space as part of their search for weapons.
If so, stretching the terms of those “weapons searching” Predators would allow the military in Europe to get them moving over Libya without a new POTUS order. Ditto if they were already “in country” in Libya.
But to send ANYTHING that was armed for hostile action from OUTSIDE of Libya into Libya would require CBA from the POTUS, covering exactly what the military was proposing to send.
For example, Obama could have said, “I’ll okay an Armed Predator, but I need to be there watching the video feed before any missiles are launched.”
Or he could say (like Reagan or either Bush), “Go save our people in Benghazi, use the QRF in Signolla, anything you need.”
And they would have.
It still seems to me that no CBA for any hostile action was given by Obama on 9-11. That’s why the CIA in Tripoli was able to charter a plane ( !!!!! ) and send six shooters to Benghazi. They were already “in country” and didn’t need CBA from POTUS.
” Fox News was told there were not only armed drones that monitor Libyan chemical weapon sites in the area, but also F-18’s, AC-130 aircraft and even helicopters that could have been dispatched in a timely fashion.
British intelligence sources said that unarmed drones routinely flew over Benghazi every night in flight patterns and that armed drones which fly over chemical sites, some a short flight from Benghazi, “were always said to be on call.” American sources confirmed this and questioned “why was a drone armed only with a camera dispatched?”
Another source added, “Why would they put a ragtag team together in Tripoli as first responders? This is not even what they do for a living. We had a first responder air base in Italy almost the same distance away.” Despite the team arriving from Tripoli that night, sources said sufficient American back-up never came.”
Packed with info articles:
http://libyasos.blogspot.com/2012/11/fox-news-vs-reuters-j-christopher.html#more
The Administration continues to muddy the water. This report says they had GLDs at Benghazi. So now the administration is trying to confuse the issue by talking about laser sights on machine guns. A GLD is used to provide a path for a bomb or missile to follow to a target. Think of it as a little electronic pilot being told by the person using the GLD where to steer that bomb or missile to. A laser sight is used to let a rifleman, or in this case a machine gunner, see where his bullets will strike. A GLD is used to bring high explosives onto a target such as a 1,000 pound bomb from a circling aircraft. The pilot does not have to see the target. The bomb or missile will go where the CIA operator on the ground is pointing the GLD at. This is a very accurate means of delivering bombs. The bomb will strike within feet of where the GLD is pointed. A laser sight is used to bring rounds from a rifle or pistol onto a target. There is more to it, but this should provide a basic understanding. The big point is, the CIA operators in Benghazi had a GLD and this meant they were ready and able to bring high explosive bombs and missiles onto the enemy. The only reason bombs weren’t being dropped onto the very laps of the enemy is that there were no aircraft above Benghazi with laser guided bombs. The talk by Panetta about not using bombs to support the Americans in Benghazi because of missing the enemy and hitting civilians is baloney. They could have dropped bombs onto the heads of the attackers. Think of a C-130 gunship as being able to use the GLD to focus the fire of several machine guns onto that one laser point. In a shooting match, you want to “suppress” the enemy. This means putting enough lead in his direction that he either can’t shoot at you or can’t shoot accurately at you. That is why the C-130 gunship is so effective. It puts so much lead or bullets on the enemy that they quit firing. It also kills lots of the enemy.
Yes, I know.
See 42.
“The admin continues to muddy the water.”
Please read the article (that I wrote) linked at #3.
To this point, NOTHING about the Benghazi non-rescue is not explainable within the logic prism of the granting or withholding of cross-border authority by the POTUS.
NOTHING.
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