Posted on 11/02/2012 9:23:44 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
While the State Department waits for a review board to determine how attackers were allowed to kill four Americans in Libya, and following a new timeline of events from the CIA, an expert in the kinds of operations that kept many more from dying in Benghazi dismisses much of the resulting criticism.
Interagency bureaucracy may have prevented forces in Benghazi from relaying their situation to the CIA or Pentagon, but the attack did not last long enough for Washington to have been able to do anything, says Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL and special operations sniper course manager.
The CIA released a prepared statement Thursday with a more detailed timeline of events, according to the Washington Post, showing rescue efforts took place over only a few hours.
Webb, now editor-in-chief of SOFREP.com, says efforts of the special operations team that responded to the consulate compound are more important that bureaucratic criticism.
"Any time you have State, CIA and other agencies, and its not an established theater, that's part of the problem itself," he says. Communication in an attack like this may have been coordinated more fluently in Afghanistan or Iraq, he says, where established military forces are well versed in their chain of command.
"By the nature of the work they do, these intelligence groups are totally compartmentalized, and that creates a complication," he says. "By nature, CIA doesn't share information with [the Department of Defense]. For military support, it would have been a while before they could figure out what was going on."
In spite of this, the CIA responders were able to get to the U.S. compound in Benghazi within 25 minutes after the attack, at roughly 9:40 p.m., according to a new CIA statement reported by the Post. This statement offers the most detailed timeline of events since the Sept. 11 attack.
"There was no second-guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger," said a senior U.S. intelligence official according to the prepared statement.
Republicans have criticized President Barack Obama for indicating the attack may have been caused by a protest over a YouTube film that criticized Islam. The president subsequently said this was a terrorist attack.
This new assessment says the information coming out of Benghazi during the attack was fragmentary and often contradictory, and the initial information sent to Congress and the White House did not contain conclusions of potential links between the attackers and al Qaeda.
A source familiar with U.S. presence in Libya tells U.S. News the Benghazi attack may have been retribution for prior special operations missions there. The source asked to remain anonymous.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and computer expert Sean Smith were already dead before the response team could do anything, Webb points out, adding much of the resulting coverage has not focused on who is still alive.
"It's pretty amazing that a small group of former and active Special Operations personnel were able to successfully rescue what was likely up to 50 people and get sensitive materials out of the other compound," Webb says of the rescue efforts and retreat to the CIA annex nearby at roughly 11 p.m.
"They did this with limited resources and under austere circumstances," he says. "The CIA, and those operators should be commended for this."
After sustaining waves of mortar attacks, another team was able to secure transportation to a nearby airport, and with Libyan security elements, help rescue survivors at 5:15 a.m.
News agencies, including a scathing Fox News assessment, point to readily available resources that the U.S. government chose not to deploy to help Americans on the ground.
However, there would be no motivation for the CIA, the Department of Defense, the State Department or the White House to withhold these resources, Webb says, aside from first establishing what was actually happening on the ground.
"It wouldn't have been, 'Don't go help,'" he says. "It very likely would have been, 'Hold tight, we need to figure out what's going on.'"
After the rescue group retreated from the consulate to the CIA annex, a security officer on the roof pointed a laser indicator at a rebel mortar team that was shelling the building, a CIA source told Fox News. These mortar rounds eventually killed former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
A Spectre gunship could have used the operator's targeting to take out the mortar team, employing a common tactic with special operations troops, the source says, if the Pentagon or CIA had chosed to deploy it.
But this engagement at the CIA annex would have been far within "danger close" parameters, Webb says, referencing the zone within 600 meters of friendly troops into which only the most experienced air combat controllers can direct aerial strikes. Given the description of the attack, the mortar team must have been within a few hundred feet, he says, and among many noncombatants.
He also dismisses any claims that balking at support was a political maneuver due to the upcoming presidential election.
"Anyone in the chain of command would have had no issue stomping out this fire, and getting those Americans out of Libya," he says.
Sources familiar with embassy security tell U.S. News the Benghazi compound was not a protected diplomatic mission like most U.S. installations worldwide. It did not, for example, have the roof hatch that could have allowed Stevens and the other Americans to escape. These have been standard issue on all diplomatic compounds since a group of militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979.
Learn more about the current state of embassy security here.
Ahead of the State Department conclusions, Webb says both communications and security could have been better.
"That's always been an issue," he says.
The State Department declined to comment, pending the independent board investigation findings.
I SOOOOOOO want to come back in 500 years to see what the history books write about these idiots. Assuming there are anything/anyone here but moorlocks.
The stupid...Yup. It burns.
You don't know that, the beaten zone from his MG could have been quite small.
But this engagement at the CIA annex would have been far within "danger close" parameters, Webb says, referencing the zone within 600 meters of friendly troops into which only the most experienced air combat controllers can direct aerial strikes. Given the description of the attack, the mortar team must have been within a few hundred feet, he says, and among many noncombatants.
Screw the non-combatants if there were any. Anyone still around after 10-20 minutes should've been a target. An AC130 can shoot closer to friendlies than 600 meters. And if you are going to die without fire support I'd take it inside the ECR. (expected casualty radius)
Would the people in Washington, DC have known what civilians, if any, might have been endangered by Woods’ fire? If Woods was firing anywhere near where the mortars were coming from, anybody who wasn’t part of the attack would have dispersed; Woods’ fire would have been warning to any “innocents” who happened to be out wandering those streets from about 1-4am who were too stupid to interpret the presence of militants shooting mortar fire as a sign that it was dangerous territory...
The excuses being used stink to high heaven. If those are the rules of engagement then every soldier we’ve got is a dead duck.
Utter BS! How would anyone know how long the attack would last when it began? This moron is saying that you can't send help until you know the final outcome. That's cowardly crapola.
We now know that they sent a message from the consulate that an attack was about to happen three hours before it began. Flight time from Sigonella is two hours. A team could have been there an hour BEFORE the attack!
No, this is all extraneous BS to try and muddy the real issue that the President abandoned the Americans in the area. They ended up dead after many hours of combat. There is/was always a plan for support, it wasn't allowed. 0bama's failure to lead = dead Americans. It is that simple, all the rest is smoke.
Bull sh*t.
Agreed. The smokescreen will be effective if people don’t think through exactly what it would mean if the excuses they give were real reasons - for instance, if we really used rules of engagement like they’re suggesting they had to use for this case.
One thing I don’t understand, that you guys might be able to help me on: if the military assets were in Sigonella because they had to hold somewhere, waiting for approval to go into Libyan airspace, were they in Italian space already before Sept 11th, or did Obama have to approve those assets going into Italian airspace? Trying to figure out at what point Obama aborted the contingency plan.
If all of this is true why did the white house, the defense department, the state department and the CIA all lie?
Even if all this is true this wouldn’t happened if the security requested by Stevens had been provided. So, why was he turned down?
Trying to figure out at what point Obama aborted the contingency plan.
When he walked out without ordering it. Find out when the meeting ended, there's your answer.
Thanks. I didn’t realize the cross-border issue wouldn’t come into play between NATO countries. I suppose Sigonella was the closest we could get without having to cross a non-NATO border?
Who would have authorized the replacement drone? The first drone was already in Libya, I understand, but the replacement came from Sigonella. Wouldn’t Obama have to authorize that?
It really depends who was controlling it. In general the answer is yes, but it is likely that the drones are part of an operation or ongoing effort already approved, whether an intel collection effort or a targeting scheme diverted to what turned out to be bad movie night at the White House.
If the drones were part of an effort already approved, such as for intel collection, it could explain why an unarmed drone was sent in rather than an armed one, if what the military has said about both drones being unarmed is correct.
If they were military drones at all. I believe nothing from this pack of liars.
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