Libya Attack Shows Pentagons 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 Pentagons 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 agencys 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.
———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?
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
So let me get this right, it’s Not the commander in chief, it’s YouTube videos and cell phones? “Come on man!
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.
Counterterrorism team not called upon to help....
Our enemies thank you for that information.
They can shutdown those cellphones in several ways... and they need to start training to do so.
LLS
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.
0bama was notified immediately and automatically when the Benghazi consulate triggered the "Imminent Danger Notification System" alert. He did nothing.
Judge Jeanine Investigates Benghazi Gate Part 4 - 10/20/2012 video 6:53
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (U.S. Army ret.), former CIA Station Chief Gary Berntsen and former CIA operative Mike Baker
Howie Carr interview with Col. Hunt On The Newest Libyan Revelations audio 28:37
There are three scandals here...
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Denial of requests for security were a dereliction of duty. The lies and misdirection about the "video" after the attack were fraud and malfeasance under the color of authority. The inaction during the attack was something more than that.
The failure to act during the attack is the direct equivalent of desertion IMO.
ONE man had the authority to act that night.
ONE man deserted his post!
EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say
0bama was MIA. 0bama Is A Deserter!
Programming note - live Hannity show on FNC tonight at 9:00 pm.