At one juncture he tried to portray Benghazi like a police op,a robbery at a 7-11 that was thousands of miles away (supposedly)and they simply could not respond to every 7-11 that gets knocked off. Especially, when they had no idea what was going on.(so many lies there you don't know where to begin)
When asked who was in charge of the op Panetta replied, "the forces on the ground." In other words Woods,Doherty and Smith who had all been told to stand down were actually in charge of the op but didn't know that no help was ever coming.Bizarre at best.
Supposedly, no one in dc was even engaged or even there watching events happen,no one calling into see if he needed a cappuccino or a bagel,or a back rub by Lindsay Graham,just Panetta. Once again stretching believability here.
Panetta also claimed that it would have taken 8 hours to respond instead of calling in F-16's in theater that could have been there in under two hours.
Panetta lied his ass off and then twisted the rest to make it sound somewhat feasible but told just enough truth to let us know that zero was MIA once again and he actually had no one to turn to and was obviously told to stand down.
Should anyone dare to get to the bottom of the Benghazi fiasco they will undoubtedly hear that it was a CIA op and they are not allowed to talk about it--the ultimate plausible deny-ability.
My thinking was either one of two scenarios could have happened:
1. Benghazi was a hit on Stevens by CIA or others since he had been gun smuggling all over the Mid- East and knew too much and had become:
a political liability.
2. A hostage taking so they could eventually trade Stevens for the blind sheik once again:
a political situation.
Let's hope we can keep Benghazi and the death of four warriors alive since the DBM are still trying to find Ben Ghazi's house on a map...
The only help came from Tripoli and they were kept at the Benghazi airport for over four hours before being allowed to proceed to the Mission. It should be noted that the six man security team from Tripoli included Glen Doherty. Here is the timeline put out by the Pentagon. I wish the questioners had used it to get more specifics from Panetta and Dempsey. It appears that DOD was doing something in response prior to the last attack, but it was mostly in the form of alerts--no movement.
September 11 (Events are listed using the time in Benghazi)
9:42 p.m. -- Armed men begin their assault on the U.S. Consulate.
9:59 p.m. -- A surveillance drone is directed to fly over the U.S. compound, but it is unarmed.
10:32 p.m. -- The Office of the Secretary Defense and the Joint Staff are notified of the attack by the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. "The information is quickly passed to Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey."
11 p.m. -- Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey meet with President Obama at the White House where they discuss the unfolding situation and how to respond. The meeting had been previously scheduled.
11:10 p.m. -- The surveillance drone arrives over the Benghazi facility.
11:30 p.m. -- All surviving U.S. personnel are evacuated from the consulate. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and State Department computer expert Sean Smith were killed in the initial assault.
September 12
Midnight to 2 a.m. -- Panetta and other senior leaders discuss possible options for further violence if it were to break out. Panetta gives verbal orders for Marine anti-terrorist teams from Rota, Spain, to prepare to deploy to Tripoli and Benghazi. Panetta also orders a special operations force team training in Croatia and an additional special operations force team in the United States to prepare to deploy to a staging base in southern Italy.
1:30 a.m. -- A six-man security team from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli arrives in Benghazi.
2:39 a.m. to 2:53 a.m. -- The National Military Command Center gives formal authorization for the deployment of the two special operations force teams from Croatia and the United States.
5:15 a.m. -- Attackers launch assault on a second U.S. facility in Benghazi. Two former U.S. Navy SEALs acting as security contractors are killed. They are identified as Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
6:05 a.m. -- A C-17 aircraft in Germany is told to prepare to deploy to Libya to evacuate the consulate personnel.
7:40 a.m. -- The first wave of Americans are evacuated to Tripoli via airplane.
10 a.m. -- A second group, including those killed in the attack, are flown to Tripoli.
2:15 p.m. -- The C-17 departs from Germany for the flight to Tripoli.
7:17 p.m. -- The C-17 leaves Tripoli with the American consulate personnel and the bodies of Stevens, Smith, Woods and Doherty.
7:57 p.m. -- The U.S. special operations force team based in Croatia arrives at a staging base in Italy.
8:56 p.m. -- One of the Marine anti-terrorist teams from Spain arrives in Tripoli.
9:28 p.m. -- The U.S.-based special operations force team arrives at its staging base in Italy.
What I find most shocking is that the military was not sent into Benghazi to secure both compounds on September 12. Panetta admitted during the hearings that they had the capability to do this but the request never came. It took 23 days for us to enter the compounds.
I have no doubt that the primary mission of the facility in Benghazi was intelligence and other activities. I don't buy any of the conspiracy theories that this was a hit on Stevens or that it was planned to use Stevens as a hostage to release the blind sheik. We could have been using it to funnel guns to the revolutionary forces in Syria. But if this facility was deemed so important to our national security interests, we should have provided the security to protect our personnel.
• 9:40 p.m.: A senior State Department security officer at the consulate in Benghazi called the CIA base, at an annex about a mile away, and requested assistance. "The compound is under attack. People are moving through the gates." CIA officers at the base can hear the alarm, and a team immediately begins gathering weapons and preparing to leave
• 10:04: A seven-person rescue squad from the agency's Global Response Staff leaves in two vehicles. The team leader is a career CIA officer and includes a contractor named Tyrone Woods, who later died. During the previous 24-minute interval, the CIA base chief calls the 17 February Brigade, other militias and the Libyan intelligence service seeking vehicles with 50-caliber machine guns. Nobody responds. The team leader and the base chief agree at 10:04 they can't wait any longer and head for the consulate.
• 10:10: The rescue team reached a chaotic intersection a few blocks from the consulate. Militias gathered there have several 50-caliber machine guns, which the CIA team tries unsuccessfully to commandeer; three militiamen offer to help. The rescue party now includes 10 people: six GRS officers; a CIA translator, and the three Libyan volunteers.
• 10:20: A reconnaissance party of two GRS officers heads to the consulate; at 10:25, three more GRS officers enter the main gate and begin engaging the attackers. The firefight lasts about 15 minutes.
• 10:40: Members of the CIA team enter the burning inferno of "Villa C," where Ambassador Christopher Stevens is believed to be hiding. CIA officers try numerous times to reach the "safe room," but are driven back by the intense smoke and fire. Small arms fire continues from the Libyan attackers.
• 11:11: An unarmed military Predator drone arrives over the compound to provide aerial reconnaissance. The drone had been diverted from a mission over Darnah, Libya, about 90 minutes away. But without weapons, it can't help much.
• 11:15: The CIA team puts the State Department group into a vehicle and sends them to the agency base; at 11:30, the CIA officers depart under fire and reach the annex six minutes later.
• 11:56: CIA officers at the annex are attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms. Sporadic attacks continue for about another hour. The attacks stop at 1:01 a.m., and some assume the fight is over.
• 1:15 a.m.: CIA reinforcements arrive on a 45-minute flight from Tripoli in a plane they've hastily chartered. The Tripoli team includes four GRS security officers, a CIA case officer and two U.S. military personnel who are on loan to the agency. They don't leave Benghazi airport until 4:30. The delay is caused by negotiations with Libyan authorities over permission to leave the airport, obtaining vehicles, and the need to frame a clear mission plan. The first idea is to go to a Benghazi hospital to recover Stevens, who they correctly suspect is already dead. But the hospital is surrounded by the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Shariah militia that mounted the consulate attack.
• 5:04: The team from Tripoli arrives at the CIA base. Glen Doherty, one of the GRS men from Tripoli, goes to the roof and joins Woods in firing positions.
• 5:15: A new Libyan assault begins, this time with mortars. Two rounds miss and the next three hit the roof. The rooftop defenders never "laser the mortars," as has been reported. They don't know they're in place until the indirect fire begins, nor are they observed by the drone overhead. The defenders have focused their laser sights earlier on several Libyan attackers, as warnings not to fire. At 5:26 the attack is over. Woods and Doherty are dead and two others are wounded.
• 6:00: Libyan forces from the military intelligence service finally arrive, now with 50 vehicles. They escort the Americans to the airport. A first group of 18, including two wounded, depart at 7 a.m. A second group of 12, plus the four dead, leave at 10 for Tripoli and then the long flight back to America.
Several things are worth noting. It is obvious that we had problems with Libyan authorities who prevented the reaction team from reaching our facilities for more than three hours.
Although it appears that the annex was hit twice that night, the impression you get from the MSM and the Administration was that there were just two attacks that night-one against the Mission compound and one seven hours later against the Annex. In fact, the annex was hit twice.
No one asked Hillary if she was on the phone with the Libyan government to clear up the delay problems at the Benghazi airport and to ask for more protection for our facilities once the first attack on the annex was finished. There was close to four hours between attacks on the annex, which held all of our surviving personnel.