Senators; “Failures in leadership — General Dempsey”
In the Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough writes about the conclusions of six Republican Senators on the Intelligence Committee who wrote in their report that our buddy, Marty Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs is largely at fault for the failures at Benghazi because he failed to have a plan to react to terror attacks in North Africa, in general and Benghazi specifically;
“The tenure of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has been marked by what we view as significant deficiencies in command,” the six wrote in an addendum to the committee’s Jan. 15 report on Benghazi. “From Syria to Benghazi, there has been either a profound inability or clear unwillingness to identify and prevent problems before they arise. Given the known operating environment in Benghazi, much less North Africa, a strong military leader would have ensured there was a viable plan in place to rescue Americans should the need arise.”
“General Dempsey’s attempts to excuse inaction by claiming that forces were not deployed because they would not have gotten there in time does not pass the common sense test,” they wrote. “No one knew when the attacks against our facilities in Benghazi would end, or how aggressive the attacks would be. That is the whole point of a pre-established emergency rescue plan-so that the length of the attack alone does not dictate the rescue or survival of Americans.”
If you guessed that Susan Collins was the only Republican on the committee to refuse to sign on with the other six, you’d be correct…you wouldn’t be surprised, but you would be correct. I’m only surprised that Dempsey didn’t blame the folks in the consulate for their cultural insensitivity which caused the attack – you know like he blamed the troops for the green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan.
Of course, we’ve already read that General Ham briefed Panetta and Dempsey on the situation in Benghazi hours before they even found time to talk to the president about the attack, so Dempsey’s excuse that there wasn’t time to respond falls flat.
Mr. Panetta also deployed two special operations teams, one in Europe and one in the United States. They did not arrive in a staging area in Sigonella, Italy, until 10 hours after the crisis ended.
Gen. Dempsey has said there were no combat aircraft available in time to provide help.
Yeah, that’s kind of the point.
I’m only sorry that it has taken anyone this long and the loss of lives (in Libya as well as Afghanistan) for people to begin to recognize that Dempsey is an incompetent boob. You know, like we’ve been trying to tell them for years.
Category: Big Army
Here-Here Jonn. Here-Here! Well said.
Who was awarded the Navy Cross then, a civilian?
This isn’t just an utter failure on Dempsey’s part. Dempsey bears the ultimate responsibility here but, there are a number of other very senior officers in the Puzzle Palace who should be forced to resign in disgrace over this too. There is a huge amount of missing integrity and competence readily observable in the Flag Officer Ranks these days, Dempsey is just the most prominent of them.
FatCircles0311: reportedly it was a Marine assigned to Delta.
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=38475
@3 How many of them were appointed since January 20, 2009?
Ya know, there are any number of P-3c Orions deployed to Sigonella at any given time. Despite how they look, they are fast, maneuverable and have VERY long legs.
When the Sandanistas overthrew Samoza in Nicaragua, my squadron sent several aircraft down to Howard AFB in Panama in case support was needed. Our a/c, as well as the others involved, had a strong cable rigged to run the length of the tube for SO’s folks to use in case we needed to insert folks quickly.
The P-3’s could have easily carried an A-Team or any other SO team from any service ( there are seatbelts for 21, but without expendable stores a LOT more could be crammed in if needed) and got them over target within hours. The aircraft not only has radar and electronic support measures, plus flares, etc, but FLIR, and recordable video, etc.
They could have flown into Benghazi or dropped support from over the consulate. They could have even orbited overhead providing data link comms, intel, live images, etc, and more A/C could have been launched to relieve them as required.
So Dempsey and the other Obama political hacks ought not to be running their mouths that assets weren’t available. They were and could have been onstation quickly, had anyone in the administration actually wanted a rescue mission.
I will close with my usual speil: I am convinced that Obama and his folks had no intention of launching any sort of rescue mission. They were running an illegal arms program out of that consulate, bypassing Congress and the laws to supply aids to the folks fighting Assad in Syria (and likely other places). They are trying desperately to keep the lid on this thing, because they know their whole house of cards will collapse if the truth comes out.
They let a US Ambassador die, as well as folks trying to protect him, US Soil be attacked and assets seized, and are doing everything possible to cover their own asses.
Eff the lot of them.
BTW, at 350 knots, (normal cruise speed is 330, top speed over 400) time from notification to launch to arrival over Tripoli would be less than 2 hours for a P-3 Orion and it’s crew. Every squadron on it’s ops cycle has at least one crew daily on a 1-hour alert status. That’s 1 hour from notification to wheels-up max.
To Benghazi, 3 hours or less depending upon whether they push the power levers forward to hurry things along. With a full bag of fuel, and, say, 2.75 hours transit each way, that still leaves maybe 7 hours onstation time available.
Just saying that if there was a will, there was a way, and from somewhere pretty damned close to where help was needed.
I’m not totally sure, but I do seem to recall that there was a general hew and cry from those in command in that AO, at that time, to allow the release of the assets available to assist the compound, but were constantly and consistently denied such from the civilian side of our national “leadership”.
Whether I’m correct or not on the above, we do need to keep a solid gimlet eye on this at it evolves and keep strong track of “story drift” over time.
We’re up against folk who rewrite history to suit their own desires as a first option in their destructionists works.
Those folk are also fully and completely supported in their efforts by a “news” media that has totally betrayed its mandate and a general public that just can’t be bothered with anything outside their own place of habitation, or their daily travel paths.
GEN Dempsey isn’t in the operational chain of command. GEN Ham wouldn’t get his deployment orders from Dempsey, he would get them straight from Panetta. If Demspey is being vilified for giving bad advice or ignoring the flashing obvious about the dangers in Libya I can get behind that, but to blame him directly for our response to Benghazi seems a bit off unless Ham requested forces in the weeks prior that were denied due to Dempsey’s influence.
“Marty Dempsey” = a failure of leadership. But he’s the perfect toadie for the Bumbler-in-Chief.
@6 AW1 Tim, take it to the next level- the illegal program was providing arms to anyone against Assad, including al Qaeda and it’s subsidiaries.
Also, back in the day in Rota, I watch a small group of SO’s climb up one of our P-3’s ladder prior to taxi and take off. They got back to the hangar before our aircraft did.
VP-49 Rota Det, 198something. It’s been done.
Dempsey’s piss poor leadership style has been working its way down the ladder.
The old “Lead by example”. We wonder why we see so many examples of leadership failures in the higher ranks of the Military, and even in general. The shit is falling apart.
Discipline is going bye bye and being replaced with political correctness and politics in general. Play along to get along.
Marty has to make sure his SHARP training is complete, his AT Level certificate is GTG and all the other required online training is done before he can authorize any operations.
FML!!
Whether Dempsey is truly to blame or not: one thing I’ve learned as a lowly low-level civil servant is that the quick and the cunning (in this case, Obummer and Hilldawg) always keep a few bumbling sycophants around as fall guys, just in case a Benghazi happens and someone needs to have the blame strapped to their backs and then thrown to the media wolves.
Dempsey, meet the wolves.
@11 AW1 Ed,
Oh yeah, that’s what i was getting at. It’s been done before and we can easily do it again. The P-3 is a flexible asset and provides many, many options for a theater commander.
V/R
A leadership failure? Gee, a think, maybe??
/sarc
Now, seriously, every one of us who ever served in anything approximating leadership, planning, alert aircraft, mobility tasking, and almost anything else requiring clearance above Secret know the sorts of things which would have been occurring without instruction and the sorts of things which would have been required to keep them from happening. That would be millions of us who know what happened and will not be fooled by any of the stupid stuff being presented.
Senators, and everyone else in DC, may I suggest that you look in a mirror and tell yourself that you share the blame, either for what you did or what you failed to do. Then resign. There might be a few who were not part of either the original failure or the cover up, but they are few and far between.
@#5, Whitey, I don’t know how many have been appointed since 1-20-2009, but there seems to have been a lot of Generals and Admirals who’ve been relieved since that same date.
“Risk Aversion” leadership at its finest.
About 1hr 20min at cruise speed, AW1 Tim. Publicly available sources give the air distance between Benghazi and Sigonella (city) at less than 500 mi (435 knots). Given 1 hr to recall personnel, US forces at NAS Sigonella could have been in the air over Benghazi in less than 2 1/2 hrs.
The Wall Street Journal has an excellent timeline of the Benghazi fiasco here:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444620104578008922056244096
Violence at the US consulate in Benghazi began around 9:30PM local. The deaths of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith appear to have occurred in the first hour (Stevens was later taken to a local hospital, possibly alive, but I believe he was mortally injured during the Consulate fire). US forces based outside Libya couldn’t have prevented that.
However, the Embassy Annex didn’t come under attack until roughly 4 1/2 hours later. Doherty and Woods were killed after roughly an hour of fighting. So there was a freaking 5 1/2 hour window in which to get the folks at the Annex assistance from outside Libya.
Yeah, I think we could have done that (gotten them help) if we’d had our act together. We didn’t. The only assistance they got was reportedly from a few US personnel who were already in-country and who may well have acted on their own initiative and without orders to do so.
Draw your own conclusions as to why the attempt wasn’t made.
GEN Dempsey was only the third option for the chairmanship back in 2011. Option #1 Gen Cartwright & #2 ADM Stavradis were under investigation…Marty had the shortest ever stint as CSA (about 5 months) when he moved over to be CJCS.