Abandoned!
Fox News is reporting that they’ve talked to people who are familiar with the radio traffic that was related to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. Apparently, the two former SEALs who were killed that day were repeatedly denied permission to aid the folks who were involved in the conflagration at the consulate and finally, they disregarded their superiors and went anyway.
At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.
As COB6 pointed out in an email, if there was a guy “painting” targets with a laser designator, that means that there was air support on station near the consulate, most likely an AC130 gunship. So all of the elements were on the scene to rescue the four Americans and disrupted the obviously planned attack, but they were denied the support they needed to save their lives.
According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.
Yeah, they’re not going to waste their time painting a target if there’s nothing to shoot with.
JP sends a link to ABCNEWS in which Leon Panetta warns everyone against “Monday morning quarterbacking”;
Panetta said that they didn’t have enough “real-time information” to send military forces to respond.
“(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta said, according to The Associated Press. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
I don’t how much more “real time” information they needed since they were in radio contact with people who were on the ground with eyes and GLDs on the targets.
The president got a “3AM phone call” and then went to Las Vegas costing the lives of four Americans by avoiding making the proper call in exchange for some campaign contributions. If Watergate cost a President his job, this cover up should certainly cost this one his job next week.
There’s much more at the excellent article at the Fox News link written by Jennifer Griffin and you should read the whole thing.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
I hope in the future that our military disregards orders like that when a situation like this comes up again.
Sad.
Good men died while politicians misplaced their priorities.
In this situation, if indeed SECDEF and GEN Ham advised the President against sending forces into the area, should the President have gone against their advice? Or do people feel they were coerced into this line by President Obama?
Blackfive and Right Scoop have an audio from Rush Limbaugh’s program today. I was listening at the time.
Riveting.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2012/10/bigger-than-watergate-proof-that-the-president-is-lying-about-benghazi.html#comments
http://www.therightscoop.com/must-watch-rush-military-caller-says-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt-obama-knew-about-benghazi-attack-ordered-no-response/
@3.
Most senior-level Field Grade officers and ALL Flag Officers are politicians.
That being said, if they blew the call, they should be relieved for cause.
The question remains – where they hell was Pateaus? He was responsible for that annex and those men. Did he have no resources? Does he not have influence with the Pentagon?
Also, where was Mattis? Isn’t this in his AOR?
I bet it was a political official (i.e. Valerie Jarrett) who made the call and this can never be admitted to.
@5 Understood. My frustration is with the immediate need to blame the President when it might in reality have been the unbiased recommendation of Ham, Dempsey and Panetta. And, it’s also possible it was an understandable recommendation. They might have felt the attack was slowing and would fade. They might have been concerned that some of the missing Stingers were nearby and could take out any air assets sent in. It could be the fire team that was targetted was surrounded by civilians, human shields, whatever.
My point is it’s too early to say that this was both unquestionably a dereliction of duty and the fault of the President.
@8
I don’t think anyone’s jumping on the idiot-in-chief without cause. Recall that he claimed a video for two weeks. That obozo was criminal in this is a given.
Panetta and the JCS ought to be in jail for this. They left these men on their own after getting all the “on the ground certainty” they needed. I am furious that any military commander in this operation would abandon those Seals.
There’s an old saying in US politics regarding blame and the Oval Office: “The buck stops here.” The POTUS takes some share of the blame whenever people his administration screws up.
It’s too early to know precisely who is at fault. But if this new report is correct and forces were on-site (an AC-130) and 2 hrs away (Sigonella) and we didn’t attempt to engage/support/rescue the guys on the ground, then IMO someone in this Administration screwed up. Bigtime.
Somebody better get fired.
Madconductor: DoD will only get involved in something like this if (1) assistance is requested and/or (2) the order to execute is given. Sounds to me like possibly one or both of those never occurred. Although I’m not too sure I’m buying there being no request for assistance from the CIA.
According to an update at Blackfive, a ‘very very trusted source’ says the AC130 resources weren’t available, so help from Sigonella wasn’t an option.
#8 Anonymous
I had to read your post at least three times to make sure you weren’t writing “tongue in cheek” – if your post is sarcastic or satire – you are a masterful writer…..but, I don’t think so.
I’m 65 years old, so if I say something like “seriously dude” that would be satirical in describing my utter disbelief in your use of words and phrases like: “immediate need to blame, unbiased recommendation, concerned, human shields, whatever, and the best – – – – My point is it’s too early to say that this was both unquestionably a dereliction of duty and the fault of the President.”
Good God – where in the hell do you come from? Listen and watch the video I posted at the links above and ask again if it’s too early to say if there is dereliction of duty…….the POTUS is a hopeless empty suit.
I’m resisting the use of a profanity laced response to your uninformed illogical comment pretty much because I have great respect the owner(s) of this site.
I’m with #1. I know we all know about the chain of command and civilian control of the military, etc. But good God, Americans, to include the personal representative of the president in Ambassador Stevens, were in deep trouble and needed some kind of support. Even a show-of-force fly over by a fast mover. The criminal negligence of the political “leadership” is bad enough. I wish someone down the chain would have said, “Screw this” and done something to aid those brave Americans in Benghazi.
In a Washington Times article, reporter Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is speculating that the attack on our Embassy in Benghazi was a result of a “gun-walking” operation to supply weapons to Syrian rebels that will make Iran-Contra look like child’s play. The article is behind a paywall, but I’ll quote a portion here: “The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legi timating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.” ……. “One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there — on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates — for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria. As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj. Fox News has chronicled how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on Sept. 6 in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms — including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles — apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria. What cries out for further investigation — and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election — is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison.” …………. “It gets worse. Last week, Center for Security Policy senior fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed that there were… Read more »
I keep coming back to the very real possibility that it was a planned kidnapping, that there was some sort of collusion from the occupier’s branch somewhere, that no resistance was supposed to get in the way of the kidnapping, and that a trade would be arranged later for a terrorist. No one was supposed to be killed, including the ambassador.
Then the ambassador and other assets on the ground got in the way of the simple plan by offering resistance. If only they had been either better informed or read the tea leaves better. In other words, it’s their own damn fault for getting in the way of a simple abduction.
OK. I’ll go sit quietly now, after donning a tinfoil hat.
@14 I’ll chalk my verbal diarrhea up to a lack of sleep. My point was simply that while the President might indeed be an empty suit, in this case if he listened to his military leadership, he did what he should have done.
Whether the advice they gave him was good advice is a different matter entirely.
Again, it could be my lack of sleep, but what part of that is highly illogical?
Then again, Tim, what you have written is entirely plausible as well.
@ 18: He idiothood has given us no indication that he ever takes any advice from persons with knowledge counter to his political agenda.
“They might have felt the attack was slowing and would fade.”
This doesn’t seem to be the case with repeated calls for immediate support.
Just in case any one doesn’t know. According to open source info and in ref to FLASH traffic as mentioned in the Rush phone call (which is what an Ambassador in distress message would have been): This precedence is reserved for initial enemy contact messages or operational combat messages of extreme urgency. Brevity is mandatory. FLASH messages are to be handled as fast as humanly possible, ahead of all other messages, with in-station handling time not to exceed 10 minutes. Messages of lower precedence are interrupted on all circuits involved until the handling of FLASH messages are completed.
Pay special attention to that line: all messages of lower precedents are INTERRUPTED on ALL CIRCUITS involved until handling of FLASH is complete.
What this means, for the uninitiated is that the ‘story’ of the requests for help being ‘lost in the noise’ dose not/cannot hold much water.
-Ish
The only comment I can add that I have not seen elsewhere is, is it possible the mission the CIA guys were running was more important and should not have been compromised even at the expense of an Embassador? It is the only legit reason I can see for them being waved off, if otherwise everyone should quit.
@#7, same here. If that’s the case, the only way we’ll find out is if whoever is picked to go under the bus for this fiasco decides to speak up.
As for Petraeus, perhaps he was never consulted? After all, why would The Once want him around, he’s not on the real team, the re-election team. Perhaps someone(Jarrett) told him not to take a phone call from Petraeus?
Then again, “My point is it’s too early to say that this was both unquestionably a dereliction of duty and the fault of the President”? They were watching it in real time, unless they’d turned the TV’s off. They knew what happened, and went with “It’s a spontaneous demonstration, in response to the video”.
While all of you are in this discussion over who is to blame and who is not, you forget one small but important thing: Bo has not taken initiative of any kind in regard to making decisions since Valerie Jarrett started tailoring his career for him.
Whoever is actually responsible for all of the stupid actions that led to this disaster will some day come to light, just as Nixon’s fingers in the ‘pie’ of Watergate and the other fiascos associated with his administration were brought to light — and he admitted to his culpability in all of that.
As long as Bo is in the White House, there is an entire crew of people who are being held by the short hairs. Until this is all over, nothing will change.
What you have to do, if you want to stop the crazy things that are going on now, is get to the polls on Nov 6 and make sure that you don’t vote for Bo.
Ok, so I’m willing to consider that maybe O didn’t make the call to not send some kind of help or that he trusted the call of someone else. Then my question is why the lack of transparency? Why isn’t there a statement about why we didn’t send assets because of x, y, and z? Why isn’t some 4 star now perfecting his game of solitaire in some dead end job? No AC-130’s available? Fine, tell us that. SF on route but couldn’t get there in time? Fine, at least something was tried. Don’t lie to me and just keep running your reelection campaign. Don’t lie to me and say there was too much traffic and then say you thought it was over. Which is it? You didn’t know it was hitting the fan or that the spay had stopped? For me, it’s just too much BS to handle from an administration already spreading so much manure.
And for the record, I expect to see things getting worse than they are now…for various reasons.
Interesting theory here: http://www.westernjournalism.com/october-surprise-gone-horribly-wrong/
If true, it’ the height of cynical political manipulation.
Tree, rope, some assembly required.
TWO WORDS:
Congressional Investigation
TWO MORE WORDS:
Criminal Charges
END OF WORDS
PS:
THREE MORE WORDS:
I am disgusted!
Ex-PH2: not voting “for” Obama is NOT enough. Mathematically, that’s a necessary condition, but is not in and of itself sufficient.
Casting a protest vote is equivalent to voting for Obama. Doing that reduces the votes Obama needs to win a given state’s electoral votes by one. Ditto for staying home.
In other words: either Romney or Obama will win. Anything other than voting for one of the two – e.g, casting a protest vote or staying home in protest – has the same effect as casting a vote FOR the candidate you like LEAST.
Petraeus says:
“No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/petraeus-throws-obama-under-bus_657896.html
@ Hondo … please tell that to my wife. Last time she DID NOT vote for Obama … but DID NOT vote for McCain. I keep telling her it is because of her (and others like her) Obama has been our President for the last 4 years!
I’m reminded of Randall Shugart and Gary Gordon. If the two former SEAL had still been in uniform, they’d be up for a MOH.
I’ve noticed one thing about this administration that makes it stand out. They are always genuinely suprised at being held accountable. Here’s the thing: f*ckups happen. That’s the price of doing the nation’s business. Take your lumps, learn, recover, kick ass the next day. That means firing the assclowns in charge and responsible and find someone competent. Not this administration. From Fast & Furious to the economy to the Arab Spring, nobody’s been fired for anything at any time regardless of the body count.
Folks used to shit themselves over how loyal Bush-43 was to his people, but he’s a lightweight compared to his successor.
Dave, I don’t think it’s loyalty from Obama downward so much as it is self-preservation. Nothing is his fault, and if it’s found to be the fault of someone lower down in the food chain, it’s better to cover them than to admit that someone f**ked things up, which might reflect adversely on The Once.
And this is what Bite Me had to say to one of the dead SEAL’s fathers at his son’s memorial:
“Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”
I shit you not.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/331758/vice-president-bidens-most-crass-tasteless-gaffe-ever#
Hondo, what?
What are you saying? Don’t vote at all? Or voting for Romney is still going to get Bo re-elected? What are you saying?
I did not in any way say anything about a ‘protest’ vote. You aren’t making any sense.
Hey Ex-PH2, Bo is not the CINC’s name. But I wouldn’t expect anyone who frequents this page to actually respect the office of the presidency…unless a Republican is in office, of course.
The fraud occupying the office of the President of the United States doesn’t even respect it. Why should anyone else?
I absolutely respect the Office of the President. I just don’t respect the individual currently occupying that job.
AND BY THE WAY, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH CALLING HIM “BO” SINCE NO ONE BUT HIM APPARENTLY KNOWS what HIS REAL NAME IS.
Word.
@36 Oh, hey yourself, anonymous. Bo is the dog’s name. B.O. are the initials of the incumbent. He named the dog after himself, you dope, so why wouldn’t I call him Bo? Huh?
Frankly, I had more respect for Richard ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon than I do for this clown. Nixon, despite his paranioa and dislike of people, took his role as President seriously.
I do not see that quality in the incumbent.
I wonder, if the CIA got the go ahead the first time if the Ambassador and VileRat might still be alive.
That should be ‘paranoia’.
Man! Must be Friday again. Must not type in sleep.
re #41
Ha, a goon.
@NSOM, isn’t it time Biden had surgery?
He needs to have his mouth sewn shut!
@36
Did you show the same self-righteousness during the Bush presidency?
See the great thing about the US is that I can call the president a dickbag if I like. I can refer to him ass the assbag in chief. Technically he works for me now he is a public servant the CoC is reversed now that I am a civilian. I don’t have to have any respect for the office or the man who holds the office. It isn’t nobility and he wasn’t granted it by some divine right. I really, really, really hate this sense of nobility or respect that people seem to think has to go along with the office that a person holds. See we as Americans don’t have to respect anyone by virtue of their position that was part of why we became America. We got tired of being ruled by people who believed that. I can call President Obama, bo, ob, BO, fuckhead, shitbag, Barry-o or whatever I feel like calling him. I don’t have to respect him by virtue of the job he has right now. Sorry that is a REALLY big pet peeve of mine.
Now judges while in a courtroom totally different matter…
NSOM,
Goon (sorta) and former little bee.
@#46 Well said! I’ll further by saying if the shitstick can’t lead then it’s time to make room for someone who can.
This whole thing stinks worse than a dead frog in the sun. Nothing adds up.
A cover-up at the start. And now a cover-up of the cover-up? Will we see a cover-up of the cover-up of the original cover-up?
This is giving me a headache.
You know I was going to write something really cool and long but I think I spent most of my brainpower earlier today on something else…
You know it is sad when a few guys have to go it alone hoping they will get some back up and they are left alone. Then some dickhead has the cajones to go up to one of their father’s and make a crass comment about the size of his balls when they let him die without the support he needed.