BZ T-McG!!!
Posted on 11/02/2012 5:45:37 AM PDT by Travis McGee
The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor — the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.
Once the alarm is sent – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.
That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.
No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.
On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.
Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya — such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.
How might this process have played out in the White House?
If, at the 5:00 p.m. Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta and Vice President Biden, President Obama said about Benghazi: “I think we should not go the military action route,” meaning that no CBA will be granted, then that is it. Case closed. Another possibility is that the president might have said: “We should do what we can to help them … but no military intervention from outside of Libya.” Those words then constitute “standing orders” all the way down the chain of command, via Panetta and General Dempsey to General Ham and the subordinate commanders who are already gearing up to rescue the besieged outpost.
When that meeting took place, it may have seemed as if the consulate attack was over, so President Obama might have thought the situation would stabilize on its own from that point forward. If he then goes upstairs to the family quarters, or otherwise makes himself “unavailable,” then his last standing orders will continue to stand until he changes them, even if he goes to sleep until the morning of September 12.
Nobody in the chain of command below President Obama can countermand his “standing orders” not to send outside military forces into Libyan air space. Nobody. Not Leon Panetta, not Hillary Clinton, not General Dempsey, and not General Ham in Stuttgart, Germany, who is in charge of the forces staging in Sigonella.
Perhaps the president left “no outside military intervention, no cross-border authority” standing orders, and then made himself scarce to those below him seeking further guidance, clarification, or modified orders. Or perhaps he was in the Situation Room watching the Predator videos in live time for all seven hours. We don’t yet know where the president was hour by hour.
But this is 100 percent sure: Panetta and Dempsey would have executed a rescue mission order if the president had given those orders.
And like the former SEALs in Benghazi, General Ham and all of the troops under him would have been straining forward in their harnesses, ready to go into battle to save American lives.
The execute orders would be given verbally to General Ham at AFRICOM in Stuttgart, but they would immediately be backed up in official message traffic for the official record. That is why cross-border authority is the King Arthur’s Sword for understanding Benghazi. The POTUS and only the POTUS can pull out that sword.
We can be 100% certain that cross-border authority was never given. How do I know this? Because if CBA was granted and the rescue mission execute orders were handed down, irrefutable records exist today in at least a dozen involved component commands, and probably many more. No general or admiral will risk being hung out to dry for undertaking a mission-gone-wrong that the POTUS later disavows ordering, and instead blames on “loose cannons” or “rogue officers” exceeding their authority. No general or admiral will order U.S. armed forces to cross an international border on a hostile mission unless and until he is certain that the National Command Authority, in the person of the POTUS and his chain of command, has clearly and explicitly given that order: verbally at the outset, but thereafter in written orders and official messages. If they exist, they could be produced today.
When it comes to granting cross-border authority, there are no presidential mumblings or musings to paraphrase or decipher. If you hear confusion over parsed statements given as an excuse for Benghazi, then you are hearing lies. I am sure that hundreds of active-duty military officers know all about the Benghazi execute orders (or the lack thereof), and I am impatiently waiting for one of them to come forward to risk his career and pension as a whistleblower.
Leon Panetta is falling on his sword for President Obama with his absurd-on-its-face, “the U.S. military doesn’t do risky things”-defense of his shameful no-rescue policy. Panetta is utterly destroying his reputation. General Dempsey joins Panetta on the same sword with his tacit agreement by silence. But why? How far does loyalty extend when it comes to covering up gross dereliction of duty by the president?
General Petraeus, however, has indirectly blown the whistle. He was probably “used” in some way early in the cover-up with the purported CIA intel link to the Mohammed video, and now he feels burned. So he conclusively said via his public affairs officer that the stand-down order did not come from the CIA. Well — what outranks the CIA? Only the national security team at the White House. That means President Obama, and nobody else. Petraeus is naming Obama without naming him. If that is not quite as courageous as blowing a whistle, it is far better than the disgraceful behavior of Panetta and Dempsey.
We do not know the facts for certain, but we do know that the rescue mission stand-down issue revolves around the granting or withholding of cross-border authority, which belongs only to President Obama. More than one hundred gung-ho Force Recon Marines were waiting on the tarmac in Sigonella, just two hours away for the launch order that never came.
So in reality, the film of this non-action is so covered with guilty fingerprints it’s practically opaque. Forget about the Marines spooling away on Sig, the mere fact that there wasn’t an F/A-18 on station within an hour after the SHTF call is evidence of omission, proving a military solution wasn’t on the table from the get-go. Otherwise, what the hell? I can’t imagine anyone debating for more than a half a second whether or not to save American lives when you have the nation’s resources and might behind you.
Flashback to President Reagan and the invasion of Grenada to “rescue med students”: end of problem of Cuban/Soviet settlement there. Media briefly complained. End of story for many years.
Yes, yes, yes. And personally, I think that the White House and State didn’t even bother to order or approve the pathetic little ad-hoc “rescue team” from Tripoli, but that was sent only by the local U.S. honcho in Tripoli, probably the CIA Station Chief, or acting Station Chief, if Stevens was wearing both hats. Very unusual if true, but I don’t know their protocals.
Yes indeed! Grenada, botched in some ways as it was, was a clear signal to our enemies. D
ON’T MESS AROUND IN OUR BACK YARD OR WE WILL STOMP YOU INTO THE GROUND!
OTOH, Obama went on the “blame free speech apology tour,” ending at the U.N. with his infamous,
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
Al Qaeda must be debating whether Obama is just a “useful idiot,” or an extremely clever jihadist mole.
bttt
Outstanding Article & effort TMG!
BZ T-McG!!!
Bret Baier’s show has just had an illustrated timeline of all the actions on Sept 11 & 12 in and out of Benghazi. There was a brief delay of the first response, waiting for permission, iirc.
“It is hard to believe that 48% of my fellow Americans will vote for this slug of a leader.” ... Um, YOUR fellow Americans are not among the 48%, and that’s by design, because the DNC set out decades ago to divide America so that they could work on consolidating a dependency class which would be guaranteed to vote for their handouts. America is now divided and perhaps shall never be reunited. The true enemies of the Republic infect the once great democrat party. A political party that uses the slaughter of millions of alive unborn Americans as an empowerment scheme is evil to its core. Those are not YOUR fellow Americans, they are a different set of Americans.
source: http://www.barenakedislam.com/
Sent to my mailing list! Thanks for your great service to your cuontry, in the past and especially now!
Ghadaffi said in a public speech in 2008 that the Muslim world contributed to Obama’s campaign in the hopes that he would not forget his Muslim faith. And a year and a half later, in January of 2010, Obama privately told the Egyptian ambassador that he was and still is a Muslim who supports the Muslim agenda, and that the Muslim world needed to be patient with him because he had to get Obamacare crammed down our throats first before turning to the Muslim agenda. And sure enough, once Obamacare was crammed down our throats, the seeds for Arab Spring were sown and came to fruition.
The agenda all sects of Islam agree on is the destruction of the US and Israel and the institution of worldwide sharia, and everything Obama has done while in office has served to further those 2 goals.
In addition, George Soros (who has said that he bought and paid for the democratic party; it is his) asked both Hillary and Obama during the 2008 primary (according to democrat sources speaking to Bettina Viviano) whether they were on board with his plans to destroy the US economy; Hillary wasn’t but Obama was. Soros has said that he hopes the US doesn’t win the war on terror because then the US and capitalism would be strong, and he views himself as God and believes that he needs to rid the world of those 2 evils - America and capitalism. So Soros is aligned with the communists and the Islamists. Just like Obama has been all his life. Soros is the union of the two towers - the 2 great enemies of the US and freedom: communism and Islamism. And Obama, his puppet, is also the union of those 2 anti-American powers.
And sometime before the Sept 2008 run on the bank US intelligence personnel in Egypt(?) were told by their sources that an economic terrorist act was going to be perpetrated by world Muslims.
About a week after the Sept 2008 run on the bank Bush suddenly decided to give a speech to the American public saying that if we didn’t pass TARP the world as we know it would end. Communists like Castro and Chavez were saying, “Since capitalism has failed, the world should try communism”. And Islamists like Zawahiri and Ahmadinejad were saying, “Since capitalism has failed, the world should try Islamic finance” (and indeed, the week after the crash BErnanke and Paulson were leading seminars on Islamic finance). The IMF was meeting to decide what to do, now that “capitalism had failed”. It was a mantra from all the players on the team, with President Bush telling the US we were in serious doo-doo and capitalism could come to an end if we didn’t pass TARP, a drop in the bucket compared to the toxic assets at issue.
The Muslim world has been saying all along that Obama is a Muslim, and if he was not lying about being Christian in order to gain power (to further the goals of Islam through taqiyya), they would be saying he needed to be executed as an apostate. I think they know he is on their side - and not just because he told us so directly in his book, but because he is bought and paid for and is a card-carrying puppet of the communist-Islamist alliance.
So I think the Muslim world knows what Obama is.
Geraldo was on O’Reilly tonight and I guess O’Reilly was upset with some of the things Geraldo had said this morning with Eric.
But .. I can’t stand Geraldo so I turned it off .. but it replays again - so you can try to catch it if you want.
Hi Travis,
I was so stunned by this article that I just sat down and cried my eyes out for a couple of hours.
I have a lot of family who were formerly military of some sort (an AF ace and a Naval Commander), so the military is very special to me.
I couldn’t help but wonder how the 100 Marines felt when they were not allowed to do the mission .. and I also wondered it they were concerned if Obama would treat them the same and abandon them in their time of need too ..??
No one should waste ONE vote on such a cowardly president.
If there were 100 Marines, or even 25 AF Security Police waiting for the Go order. We’ll know about sooner or later, probably sooner. Then we’ll know how they felt.
It won’t be pretty.
I know. The folks “down range” feel totally betrayed. They know the truth, and won’t fall for all of the CIA smokescreen. The “rescue team” from Tripoli was an afterthought, ginned up IN TRIPOLI by the on-scene American leaders, who had to even charter a damn airplane to get six shooters on! Washington had NOTHING to do with sending the Tripoli “rescue team” (sic).
The real question is why Obama would not send the very robust USMC rescue force that was waiting for the launch order in Sigonella.
That’s what they are evading.
ROTFLOL Can't put it any better than that!
Permit a poor civie like me to give you a big 'Hoo ah,!' Matt.
This is good. This is significant. This is going to make a big difference in the narrative going forward and give courage to the thousands upon thousands of former and current mil personnel who know exactly what you're saying to open up and back you up.
Three words: National Command Authority
“The White House never ordered a stand-down.”
The ICG would have done so.
Where was Thomas Pickering on the night of Sept 11th, 2012, was he responsible for the STAND DOWN ORDER?
“The White House never ordered a stand-down.”
It’s no wonder Pickering is in charge of the investigation.
He is investigating his own role and he will be found not culpable. (by himself)
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about/board.aspx
National Command Authority is right.
We don’t hear about NCA or CBA in the MSM. They are helping the White House with the obfuscation effort.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.