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Ex-AFRICOM Brig. General: Military Should Have Responded to Benghazi Attack

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On May 1, 2014 In The Point

General Lovell also served as the Deputy Commanding General of Joint Task Force ODYSSEY GUARD with the mission to plan for any potential United States military missions in Libya following the fall of the regime of Moammar Gadhafi. Joint Task Force ODYSSEY GUARD was instrumental in providing support to the Department of State as it reopened the United States Embassy in Tripoli.

Parts of retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell’s testimony are technical having to do with AFRICOM, but he makes one very important point. The Obama side on the Benghazi side has repeatedly claimed that there wasn’t enough time to do anything. But that’s a retroactive argument.

If you do nothing, then you’re rolling the dice that the enemy might finish off your people before you could have done something and then you have an excuse.
Instead of a military response to Benghazi, Obama absurdly enough sent in the FBI.
Lovell’s testimony is the first from a member of the military who was at Africa Command at the time of the attack. Lovell was deputy director for intelligence at Africa Command.

Lovell did not question the Pentagon claim that it could not have scrambled forces in the region quickly enough to have prevented the deaths of the Americans. Lovell said no one at the time of the attack knew how long it would go, so could not have determined then that there was no use in trying.

“As the attack was ongoing, it was unclear whether it was an attempted kidnapping, rescue, recovery, protracted hostile engagement or any or all of the above,” Lovell said.
It’s not just about the timeline. It’s about the fact that Obama and Hillary refused to even try and that their response was to shift blame and send a scapegoat to prison for offending Muslims.

Cummings broke in with his buffoon act again.
“Why are you testifying that the U.S. military did not try to save lives,” Cummings asked.

Lovell said he was not disputing that information.
…

“We should have continued to move forward with whatever forces we had to move forward with,” Lovell said.

He described a sense of desperation while attack unfolded when asked by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, how the military responded during the attack.

“We sent a drone overhead,” Lovell said, almost mumbling. “It was desperation…. There was a lot of waiting for State Department for what it was that they wanted.”
Which means that it really came down to what Hillary wanted.

“We didn’t know how long this would last when we became aware of the distress nor did we completely understand what we had in front of us, be it a kidnapping, rescue, recovery, protracted hostile engagement or any or all of the above,” Lovell said. “But what we did know quite early on was that this was a hostile action. This was no demonstration gone terribly awry.”

But the lie had to be told anyway.