Did Obama Refuse To Aid Our Men In Benghazi?

Red State ^ | October 27, 2012 | streiff

[Cincinatus' Wife]

In the month and a half since our consulate in Benghazi was sacked and our ambassador and three other staffers killed the Obama regime is no closer to presenting a coherent, truthful narrative of what happened before, during, and after the incident than it was when it uttered its first deliberate lies and misdirections on September 12.

Right now we are being treated to the vision of the highest level of the ongoing criminal enterprise that governs us playing the equivalent of a game of musical chairs.

About a week ago, the political branches of the regime decided to finger the intelligence services as the culprits. We’ve been told over and over how there just wasn’t sufficient intelligence provided to either anticipate the attack or to determine the identities of the attackers. Of course, we now know that both those stories are unmitigated falsehoods.

The newest question is who allowed the four men to be killed in Benghazi, or conversely who forbade any attempt to save their lives. This decision seems to reach all the way into the Oval Office.

What we now know is that the attack was monitored, in real time, in the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House, and at Africom HQ in Germany. We know there was a Predator drone overhead and we know the consulate provided live audio feed of the attack until the end.

An important fact is buried here.

Predators don’t just magically appear on the scene. They have to be launched and they have to have a mission when they are launched. A Predator UAV has a range of 675 miles with a max speed of 135mph. The UAV almost certainly had to have been launched from the US facility at Signonella in Sicily.

This means that the UAV was launched over three hours before the attack began and the operation order issued some time before launch. This implies that hours before the attack was launched there was sufficient concern about something in Benghazi that a UAV was tasked to be on station.

The administration is also fond of referring to the attack being at night. While that is true, what they are trying to do is create the illusion that the attack happened in the middle of the night in Washington. It didn’t. The attack began around 2pm EST, right in the middle of the duty day with everyone who was needed to make the required decisions on hand.

>>>President Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Biden in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. ET, a little more than an hour after the onset of the attack. The Pentagon began moving military assets:

– Eight from Special Operations were sent from Tripoli.

– A “FAST team” (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security team) of Marines from Rota, Spain, were sent to guard the Embassy in Tripoli.
– A Special Operations force was moved from central Europe to Sigonella Air Base in southern Italy, just 480 miles from Benghazi.
– F-16s and Apache helicopters remained parked and unused at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.
– Two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean Sea were moved off the coast of Libya on the day of the attack but were never used.

Asked why the U.S. military did not do more, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the first rule in such a situation is not to deploy troops into harm’s way unless there is a clear picture of what is happening.<<<<

One doesn’t know what to make of Panetta’s statement. You never have a “clear picture” of an evolving combat operation. This is what Clausewitz referred to as “friction” and the “fog of war.” It seems that a reasonable observer would conclude that real time video feed plus real time audio communications with the people in the consulate provided as close to a “clear picture” as possible in the absence of a Vulcan Mind Meld with the terrorist leader.

So we have a rescue force staged in Sigonella. We have the people on the ground begging for help. And we seem to have had an AC-130 gunship in near proximity to the action. And a decision was made by someone that caused the death of these four men just as surely as any action by a Libyan terrorist:

>>> Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

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.<<<

Pay special attention to the last graf. The security officer was painting a target with a laser designator. You don’t do that unless the AC-130 is close enough to acquire the target.

Not long after Jennifer Griffin filed the report quoted above, CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement:

>>>“No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”<<<

What it doesn’t say practically screams at the reader. He is clearly saying that someone denied help but it wasn’t anyone in the CIA. He doesn’t even deny that the CIA passed on the bad news.

Now the White House has said it wasn’t them:

>>>The White House on Saturday flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11th.

“Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.<<<

The White House statement really doesn’t mean anything. First and foremost, this White House lies just to keep in practice. They’ll lie about what cereal Obama had for breakfast so lying about something akin to manslaughter is hardly unsurprising. As we parse the statement, keep in mind the White House doesn’t actually command military forces. Any order from the White House would be relayed by way of the Secretary of Defense who is increasingly looking like the guy with no chair nearby as the music stops.

Panetta’s weaselly “clear picture” statement gives the impression of a man with a guilty conscience. He is the guy who exercised command authority over all the resources available to attempt a rescue and he is the guy who would have told them to not respond. But the idea that the President of the United States just abruptly left the situation room and did no participate in the decision is ludicrous on its face.

The facts now seem fairly clear. Forces were positioned to effect a rescue of at least some of the men who are now dead. An order was given by the Secretary of Defense to not launch a rescue attempt either by the reaction force staged in Sicily or by an AC-130 gunship orbiting over head. The White House had video feed and audio feed available presenting them with a clear picture of the situation on the ground. And the President of the United States decided four dead Americans was a small price to pay for preserving the political fiction of the Arab Spring.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Two more puzzle pieces that are circulating. [LINKS in article above and ones below]

Has General Ham Been Fired? "Has General Carter F. Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, been fired for defying Leon Panetta on Benghazi?

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, ran a piece Saturday afternoon titled "Interesting Rumor Concerning General Carter Ham and Stand Down Order." This piece is presented as a rumor. It suggests that General Ham was told to stand down from sending aid to Benghazi, that General Ham on his own decided to proceed, and that he was then relieved of his command. Remember, all rumor at this point.

On 18 October 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta participated in a "DOD News Briefing on Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force." In his introductory remarks, Mr. Panetta said: "Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command . . ."

Barone: Playing the Petraeus Card "Who denied the Navy Seals’ pleas for help in Benghazi? Bill Kristol, in a Friday Weekly Standard blogpost entitled “Petraeus Throws Obama under the Bus,” noted that the CIA put out a statement that “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.” Bill says that “presumably” this statement could not have been made without the express approval of CIA Director General David Petraeus and that we must conclude that Petraeus decided that he was not going to take the fall on this. It must have been someone higher up who did, Bill says, and concludes that President Obama must have given the order not to help.

.....................Petraeus has made a statement in public, at least through his spokesman, and one that is not helpful to the president. Why would he do that? I suspect it has to do with the warrior’s ethic of not leaving a fellow soldier behind. I am told that that is a very strong ethic indeed. It is something a civilian commander can sometimes do honorably, in the broad national interest of which he has been chosen by the people to be the judge. But it does not seem to be something that a solider, even a retired soldier like General Petraeus, believes he could honorably do. And he doesn’t want anybody, now or when it comes time for his obituary to be written, to think that he has done so. If President Obama is shoved under the bus, so be it. Honor, as James Bowman has written and as George Washington and so many Founders believed, is paramount." [article also posits why Romney did not go for the Benghazi "bait" in the 3rd debate.]

[null and void]

It was either gross negligence or “evinces a wanton disregard of human life”.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

Our President saw the attack
Our President went to sleep
He abandoned his post as Commander-in-CHief

Dereliciton of duty - at least
Arm the muzzie Buddiehood
Finance the Muzzie Buddiehood at Benghazi
Treason at least - Check out the definition

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The photo, which is the official one put out by DOD, from the press conference held by Panetta and General Dempsey is horribly eloquent in terms of body language.

Benghazigate: We Know Now Who Gave the Order Not to Protect the Consulate

But certainly Obama made the decision.

Oct 14, 2012 - Mother of Murdered State Department Official Sean Smith Demands Answers

"......Smith said that Ambassador Susan Rice told her it was related to the anti-Islamic film. She recalled, “Leon Panetta took his hands with my face and said ‘trust me, I will tell you the truth. I will get the right information to you, just trust me.’ And when I heard that, I knew I couldn’t trust him, and I don’t trust any of them anymore.”........

[annieokie]

Panetta’s weaselly “clear picture” statement gives the impression of a man with a guilty conscience"""".....

As I watched Panetta give that statement, my take was exactly the same "guilty conscience".

I felt that Panetta wanted to say more, but is very afraid. I saw a very broken man. Someone needs to work on him and see if he has one ounce of decency left. I hope he will go to ISSA or whoever and request a full Protective Order, with guards.

[MestaMachine]

He needs to resign in protest and go immediately to confession...to Bret Baier...live.

[onyx]

For tomorrow. I’m too tired tonight.
Thank you very much, Cincinatus’ Wife!

Please ping your lists, everyone!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

......”However on October 26, “Ambassador” posted the following RUMINT on TigerDroppings (h/t Jim Hoft):

>>>I heard a story today from someone inside the military that I trust entirely. The story was in reference to General Ham that Panetta referenced in the quote below.

quote:

____________________________________________

“(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 told Pentagon reporters. “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.”

____________________________________________

“The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.”<<<<

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbins-report/2012/oct/28/general-losing-his-job-over-benghazi/

[null and void]

Perhaps he has children?

CNBC Exec’s Children Murdered, 1 Day After CNBC Reports $43 Trillion Bankster Lawsuit

Just sayin'...

[onyx]

Just like Covenantor said the other day on another thread, CIA Director General David Petraeus needs to come forward, in a press conference. Honor, duty, country. Tell all he knows, before the election.

The written statement, presumably from him, is insufficient.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

We still do not know the truth—at least all of it. I think Obama choked—Didn’t want to kill innocents—could not make up his mind and so let people die. He takes too long to make up his mind—its just that simple.

[null and void]

I think Obama made arrangements for Amb. Stevens to be kidnapped so he as The Master Negotiator could obtain his release just in time for the election.

It would also give him an excuse to release the blind sheik.

The Won trusted muslims to pull off the kidnapping.

They, of course, murdered him instead...

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[MestaMachine]

Didn’t want to kill innocent MUSLIM TERRORISTS so he killed four AMERICANS instead? Are you kidding me?

[Halcontent]

Obama doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about killing innocents!If Obama gave the order to stand down, it’s because Valerie Jarrett told him to! Hurry November!!

[TomasUSMC]

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/09/29/White-House-to-change-Afghanistan-generals/UPI-40981348934728/?spt=hs&or=tn

I believe there has been a Mutiny against Obama and he is trying to put it down as we speak. 2 Generals and 1 Admiral have been relieved of their posts lately.....http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/09/29/White-House-to-change-Afghanistan-generals/UPI-40981348934728/?spt=hs&or=tn
GET THE WORD OUT.

[PieterCasparzen]

From kiwiki.org...

On August 1 1979 Thirty-five U.S. Congressmen signed a letter[8]to President Jimmy Carter demanding that private bank loans to Chile be barred unless the Chilean government chose to extradite three military officials, including the former director of the Chilean intelligence service. The three had been indicted for complicity in the assassination of marxist Unidad Popular government member and KGB agent Orlando Letelier and the killing of Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) staffer Ronni Moffitt in 1976.

In May 1978 the Chief Justice of the Chilean Supreme Court rejected the U.S. request for extradition.

Chief sponsor of the letter was Rep. Tom Harkin (D-IA), who was joined by Congressmen John Burton (D-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Robert Kastenmeier (D-WI), Ron Dellums (D-CA), Berkley Bedell (D-IA), Richard Ottinger (D-NY), Fred Richmond (D-NY), Robert Drinan (D-MA), Leon Panetta (D-CA), Don Edwards (D-CA); Norman Mineta (D-CA), Pete Stark (D-CA}, Anthony Beileson (D-CA) George Brown (D-CA), Toby Moffett (D-CT), Dale Kildee (D-MI), Eugene Atkinson (D-PA), Michael Barnes (D-MD), David Bonior (D-MI), Adam Benjamin (D-IN), William Brodhead (D-MI), Robert Carr (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Tom Downey (D-NY), Harold Hollenbeck (R-NJ), Pete Kostmayer (D-PA), Stewart McKinney (R-CT), Edward Markey (D-MA), Andrew Maguire (D-NJ) Richard Nolan (DFL-MN), Gerry Studds (D-MA), Bruce Vento (DFL-MN) and Howard Wolpe (D-MI).

read more on Leon Panetta at

http://keywiki.org/index.php/Leon_Panetta

[Armaggedon]

A righteous man or woman must stand up and declare Obama the liar he is. Obama is punishing the truth tellers. Obama is a traitor.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

BUMP!

[SGCOS]

Panetta looks like shit