Robert Gates: Obama made right decisions night of Benghazi attack

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 05/12/2013 | By Brad Knickerbocker

[SeekAndFind]

The Obama administration got some backing Sunday for the way in which it responded as terrorists attacked the US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, last September – a night of violence and confusion during which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who served in both the Bush and Obama administrations, said if he had been at the Pentagon at that time, "Frankly … I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were.”

Republican critics have said a Special Forces team or overflights by fighter aircraft based in Italy might have prevented the US losses or at least frightened off the attackers. Mr. Gates disagrees.

Such actions, he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, “without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on the ground, would have been very dangerous."

"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces," Gates said, referring to morning-after analysis. "The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way, and there just wasn't time to do that."

[TigersEye]

This can't be stressed enough...

Blow-by-Blow: How Obama & Hillary Left Americans to Die

"Nordstrom further testified in writing that Hillary Clinton waived security requirements for the Benghazi consulate despite high and critical threat levels in the six categories of security standards established under the Overseas Security Policy Board and the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999. The waiver can only be authorized by the Secretary of State, who cannot delegate that responsibility to someone else. ”If the Secretary of State did not waive these requirements, who did so by ordering occupancy of the facilities in Benghazi and Tripoli?” Nordstrom wrote."

[onyx]

You’re right!

[piasa]

Gates is a good mouthpiece, he swallowed the Kool-Aid and mindlessly repeated Obam-isms to aboid being truthful such as "kinetic military action" to refer to the war on Libya's former government.

Rhodes and Donilon are by no means alone. "Kinetic" is heard in a lot of descriptions of what's going on in Libya. "As we are successful in suppressing the [Libyan] air defenses, the level of kinetic activity should decline," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a meeting with reporters in Moscow Tuesday.---White House: Libya Fight Is Not War, It's 'Kinetic Military Action' The Washington Examiner ^ | Wednesday, March 23, 2011 | Byron York

kinetic activity=killing/fighting/bombing, etc.

[TigersEye]

Maybe he said “middle of the night” because he didn’t want to say “Sept. 11th is a Muslim holiday and 0bamugabe celebrates by giving the military the day off.”

[MHGinTN]

And that video explanation was aired BEFORE the election!

[petitfour]

Terrorists take note. You have free reign because the US military will not risk upsetting you or upsetting your plans. You should probably watch out for Independent Contractors who might be in the area in question. They are the only ones who might stop you. However, after Benghazi, I am not sure they will risk themselves for people Obama deems expendable.

[piasa]

JUNE 26, 1996 : (FILEGATE : WHITE HOUSE ILLEGALLY OBTAINS FBI FILES ON POLITICAL OPPONENTS & COMPETITORS - INCLUDING THE FILE ON FORMER CIA DIRECTOR ROBERT GATES)In documents it was discovered that an additional 300 FBI files were obtained by the White House, among them files on former National Security advisor Brent Scowcroft and former CIA Director Robert Gates.

[Doogle]

[cpdiii]

If in battle some of our troops were pinned down by enemy fire do you think his comrades in arms would say, "It is to dangerous to rescue them, so we will just let them die?

The military does not leave its guys on the battle field. They get them back or die trying. This can not be said for the President. He left them on the field of battle to die.

[MHGinTN]

It smells hauntingly like David ordering the forces to drawback from the fight, leaving Uriah the Hittite to be slaughtered so David could have pregnant Bathsheba at the palace without a scandal erupting.

[piasa]

Especially noteworthy is a report on U.S. policy toward Iran that Gates co-authored in July of 2004 with Zbigniew Brzezinski, a onetime national security advisor to Jimmy Carter and, more recently, a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
Entitled Iran: Time for a New Approach, the report reads like a study in self-contradiction. Conceding that Iran has used “Iraqi instability for its own political gain,” the report concludes, “Iran nevertheless could play a potentially significant role in promoting a stable, pluralistic government in Baghdad.” Noting that “Iranian foreign policy remains captive of the regime’s official enshrinement of anti-American and anti-Israeli ideology,” the authors nonetheless attribute strained U.S.-Iranian relations to the Bush administration’s decision to include Iran in the “Axis of Evil,” lamenting that this “undercut several months of tacit cooperation between Washington and Tehran.” ------------- "Blood Sacrifice" By Jacob Laksin FrontPageMagazine.com | November 9, 2006 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25400

[piasa]

Central to the report is the fatalist assumption that the United States is powerless to prevent an Iranian nuclear program and that the only solution is to submit to “dialogue” with the mullahs. ———— “Blood Sacrifice” By Jacob Laksin FrontPageMagazine.com | November 9, 2006 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25400

[Conserev1]

I can’t believe Dempsey even complained about it being the “middle of the night”. Seriously, WTF...??

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~``
Around the clock around the world 24 hrs a day! Was my rememberance when I was in the service!
So we only have optimum hrs to respond to blatent attacks on our Citizens in Harms way! Miltiary Personell should stay away from Politicians. They become dummed down What was Dempsey promised a future job! Americans are not that ignorant! Well @ least 45% arent!!!

[kcvl]

Gates is a political whore...is he calling the military themslves “cartoonish” because they said it could have been done?! Gates is the cartoon but he is not very funny. Anyone who works for Obama is a whore including Gates.

I believe the person who was actually on the ground risking his life over Gates...

********

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight ... They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.

Official: We knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go”

Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour’s flight.

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack.

[svcw]

correct
He knew the situation and did not care enough to even try, instead he got ready for a gala in Las Vegas and golf.

[Chgogal]

"kinetic activity=killing/fighting/bombing, etc."

And potential activity is what Obama practiced the night of 9/11/12.

[hummingbird]

"Maybe he doesn’t want to be Petraeus’d, who knows ?"

Now, that would pretty much make him a chickenshit.....

EDINVA, I think you are right on the money!

[TigersEye]

It smells hauntingly like David ordering the forces to drawback from the fight, leaving Uriah the Hittite to be slaughtered so David could have pregnant Bathsheba at the palace without a scandal erupting.

• Numerous requests for added security denied.
• Security scaled back from inadequate to less than inadequate.
• Protocols for at-risk facilities by-passed.
• F.E.S.T cut out of loop by WH.
• Rescue force in Tripoli ordered to stand down.
• Gen. Ham never receives 'go' order for forces ready to go at Sigonella or Aviano.
• Standard Marine guard for diplomatic missions replaced by poorly funded British contractor and local Feb. 17th Martyrs Brigade with Al-Qaeda ties.

Some one set them up the Al-Qaeda bomb!

[Jim Noble]

Let me start by saying I was 100% for Nixon’s impeachment and removal from office, and I would be very happy for Obama to be impeached and removed.

One of the keys in the Nixon case was methodically demonstrating that he had committed, or caused to be committed, crimes. It was not until the evidence of this was beyond dispute that the last barriers to his removal collapsed.

Obama’s bad judgement is not a crime. Lies told by willing liars are not crimes. Obama’s affinity for overseas Muslim scum is not a crime - and, since this affinity is no secret, and was not a secret in 2008, the fact that he’s been elected twice in spite of it makes the chance of one of the political branches turning it into a crime zero.

A lot of the “impeach Obama” talk here is reckless and stupid. He is not going to be impeached for deciding not to send the Marines to confront an Arab mob rioting in a foreign city. That was cowardice, for sure, fuelled by his weird sympathies and bad judgement, but it wasn’t a crime.

I have no doubt that a proper investigation of the Obama administration by either a special Benghazi committee, or better yet the House Judiciary Committee, under the supervision of experienced prosecutors and with an adequate budget for investigation, would disclose many felonies and breaches of his oath of office. He has repeatedly failed to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He has inspired, or directed, felonious harassment of citizens for their political views. He has not defended the Constitution against its many domestic enemies - far from it, he has sought them out and rewarded them with high offices.

But to reach the goal of his removal, this case will have to be proven to the House and to the People. None of his Benghazi misfeasances (that we know about so far) are going to accomplish this.