Leave your hat on, fasten the chin strap, and loan me your extra. I’m suspecting this particular whistler is a ringer. State Dpt. doesn’t have any kind of authority to deal in heavy weapons. For one, that’s why US Marines guard embassies instead of Peaceniks. We saw in Early Afganistan how weapons buy-backs have to work. The CIA ADVERTISED they were paying $50 K apiece to get them back, the ones they didn’t use on the Russians earlier. And what self-respecting rebel is going to turn in usable weapons of any sort? And why were there no reports of any planes being downed by ground fire in the early days of the Libyan Spring? If buying weapons was Stevens actual mission it would be pointless to keep it a secret-—like Walmart not putting any signs on its stores-—just hoping the word gets out? Go ahead and try to convince me that Stevens wasn’t in Beengazzi banging Libyan boys. So far as I can see/hear no one in congress is asking what his mission actually was and how did the killers even know he was there if he was good at doing SECRET MISSIONS?
I am not usually a conspiracy theorist, but I am very curious about “why” Benghazi happened. Reading your earlier replies I am now wondering if we paid them for the weapons, stored them there, and they simply stole them back.
Lots of questions and few answers. I still don’t think we gave away Stingers.... we provided the rebels air cover through NATO. I do believe we were trying to buy certain weapons the Colonel had acquired over the years from his Russian friends - i.e. SA-7’s and other variants of MANPADS. That is easy to believe, because the Arab Spring would look like Obama’s folly if a commercial airliner got dumped with a missile provided by the peaceful people we helped gain power. That is a very realistic scenario and illustrates the stupidity of this administration supporting the Arab Spring.
In the Middle East the “new regime” is usually worse than the “old regime.” See the Shah and story of Iran for the best example. This administration is terribly tone-deaf when it comes to crisis management because the media has been a bunch of boot lickers. The failure to come clean on Benghazi leads me to believe that something very stupid was taking place there and/or there were some decisions made by the administration that were indefensible in hindsight.
It’s hard to put ourselves back into that timeframe, but this was right up against the election and the real story of Benghazi did not fit the carefully crafted image the administration was trying to sell going into the election. The date creates the worst possible optics for the administration and I can easily imagine them thinking they would bury it with the help of their boot-licking media until after the election.
The problem came when a few in the media and in congress questioned the official narrative. Now they are stuck with lies that lead to more questions.