Sandy has helped provide the President with some cover in regards to what happened in Benghazi. Before the storm hit the East Coast, and Media attention was diverted towards that story, a few troubling questions were bubbling to the surface.
We;ve heard a few things that don't quite make sense, the most troubling being Obama's statement that he gave the order for the Military to "secure our personnel" while the two SEALs were holding an armed mob at bay.
Our ambassador to Libya was killed in our own consulate in Benghazi on the night of September 11. For the next six weeks, President Obama repeated the same talking point: The morning after the attack, he ordered increased security in our embassies in the region.
Suddenly, on the campaign trail in Denver on October 26, he changed his story. “The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military knew the number-one priority was making sure our people are safe.”
Notice the repeated use of the present tense, implying that he gave the order during the attack. Mr. Obama met with his national-security team, including the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at 5:00 p.m. Washington time. For over an hour, the consulate staff had been constantly reporting that they were under assault by terrorists and Ambassador Chris Stevens was missing in action. In the White House, group-think leads to the mistaken assumption that the attackers are a spontaneous mob.
An hour after the attack has begun, the president orders the CIA and the military to do “whatever we need to do.”
If that is indeed the case, a few things should be easy to uncover:
- Where is the physical order the President gave? There should be a paper trail, outlining the action ordered, whom it was directed toward, and the time it was given.
- If the order was given, someone along the way decided to ignore the directive from the President of the United States. That person should be easy to identify. One would think that if the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, having given an order to "secure our personnel", upon learning his orders were not only ignored, but resulted in the death of Americans on foreign soil, would be incredibly pissed off. Toss in that this ignoring of his orders happened in the middle of a tightly contested re-election campaign, causing unfavorable views of his leadership.
And yet the President has done nothing to indicate an order was ever given. Reminds me of a scene from a popular movie in the 90's:
The reality is that the President of the United States did nothing while brave American citizens fought to their death, protecting other American lives. The battle was watched in real time, the SEALs "painted" targets (which certainly helped the enemy to identify their positions), repeatedly called for help, and waited for the calvary that was never sent.
The same President who waited three times before giving the order to take out Osama bin Laden, waited and waited while brave Americans fought for their lives.
We know that the mortars firing at the roof of the CIA annex, where former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were still fighting six hours into the attack, were "painted" with a laser targeting device as the two repeatedly requested backup support from an AC-130 Specter gunship. AC-130s are commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to support Special Operations teams involved in intense firefights. They are deadly accurate, with little risk of harm to civilians.
The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours, more than enough time for any planes based at Sigonella Air Base in Italy, just 480 miles away, to arrive. According to Fox News, two separate Tier One Special Ops forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators. So who told them to wait?
Curiously, Gen. Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command, has been relieved of his post after only a year and a half on the job. According to James S. Robbins in the Washington Times, Ham got the same emails regarding the terrorist attack by the al-Qaida linked Ansar al-Sharia and immediately began organizing a rescue attempt.
Gen. Ham is said to have told the Pentagon he had a rapid response team ready and was told to stand down. Ham then reportedly said screw it, he was going to send help and was promptly told he was being relieved of his command.
The election will come and go, the mess left by Sandy will be cleaned up, and there will be inquiries on Capitol Hill into what happened in Benghazi. We'll soon find out it Obama gave an order, and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ignored it, or if there was never an order given in the first place.
Secretary of Defense Panetta later explained that this passivity was in keeping with a rule of warfare. “A basic principle,” he said on October 25, “is 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.”Rarely has a spontaneous mob so thoroughly intimidated our nation. And so much for sending our squads out every day in Afghanistan on patrol, when they don’t know what’s going on. The next time a platoon is told to take an objective, some corporal will say, “SecDef says we don’t have to go into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.”
Apart from the questionable philosophy of turning battle into a poker game where all cards are face up before anyone places a bet, Mr. Panetta ignored the fact that the former SEAL on the ground was giving real-time information to everyone listening in at least eight operations centers (the embassy in Tripoli, State, White House, Pentagon, CIA, Special Operations Command, Africa Command, and the National Ops Center).
The SecDef and the president have issued contradictory explanations. Either Mr. Obama ordered the Secretary of Defense to “do whatever we need to do,” or he didn’t. And either the secretary obeyed that order, or he didn’t. And he didn’t.
It is also not clear whether the SecDef countermanded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who is the direct military adviser to the president. Did the president as commander-in-chief issue an unequivocal order that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs received but chose not to execute? Or did the chairman reply that he would do nothing?
It won't be too hard to go down the line, and ask if the various commanders along the way received an order or not.
My money is on the theory the order was never given in the first place.
Did you order the "Code Red", Mr. President?
