OK Clausewitz, now it's REALLY getin deep...
Posted on 07/12/2014 12:12:46 PM PDT by QT3.14
The military might have been able to prevent two of the four U.S. deaths in Benghazi if commanders had known more about the intensity of the sporadic gunfire directed at the CIA installation where Americans had taken refuge and had pressed to get a rescue team there faster, according to senior military leaders.
In closed-door testimony to Congress earlier this year, top military officers said that after the first attack on the main U.S. diplomatic outpost on Sept. 11, 2012, they thought the fighting had subsided and the Americans who had fled to the CIA base about a mile away were safe. In fact, they were facing intermittent small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades around midnight and had returned fire. Then the attackers dispersed.
Hours later, at first light, an 11-minute mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attack slammed into the CIA annex, killing security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
“Fog of war”? Please. Ridiculous.
can anyone give a link where the complete transcripts to the military officers testimony is shown ? Now released , but where ?
ONLY FOG was in the White House... everywhere else was pretty clear..
OK Clausewitz, now it's REALLY getin deep...
Yeah, blowing smoke isn’t fog.
Fog of judgment and accountability
Bull chit and lies. That’s all this is.
“Fog of war”? Please. Ridiculous.
More like the “smoke screen of Obama and Clinton” then the “fog of war”
I’m getting really sick of this “fog of war” excuse being used for every screw-up that nobody wants to take responsibility for.
According to this article, drones can’t see well at night...
I ran this by a contact who has info about such things and he openly began to laugh calling it “ ridiculous and an outright lie”. We have the most advanced weapon systems on earth that can see anywhere, anytime, in any condition yet we are supposed to believe a bit of darkness and gunfire will obscure an advanced reconnaissance platform designed to relay battlefield information in real time.
And one other thing, there is little chance that was a predator. The military calls every drone a predator because the ones in operation are top secret.
This may be what you’re looking for:
I’m thinking...more like “choom of war”.
I’ve read the first eight transcripts. Here are some highlights for me.
There was an AC-130 in the region. The OPS Admiral didn’t know the capabilities of this Air Force aircraft.
There wasn’t an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.
The Air Force made the statement to the OPS people in Germany that it would take 16 hours from notification to get an F-16 from Aviano to Benghazi.
Communications were actually not bad.
One of the facilities in Benghazi had been used by Americans fairly extensively during the fighting to overthrow Qadaffi.
Lots of discussion over what “stand down” means.
Can’t see well at night. . .what a bunch of low grade crud.
Sensors are functional using visual (E/O) and infrared.
Some have a special sensor that has a SAR-type of sensor as well.
The UAV’s operating that night had excellent visuals and zooming capability.
EVERYONE in the White House, State Department and Pentagon situation rooms was watching it real-time.
They knew what was happening but yet politics demanded no action.
imagine “Fog of War” being used as an excuse under a Republican administration...
“The Air Force made the statement to the OPS people in Germany that it would take 16 hours from notification to get an F-16 from Aviano to Benghazi.”
That would involve putting together a full strike package, not a rapid-reaction show of force.
Around 2-hrs could have had F-16’s overhead doing a show of force passes and a couple of gun-runs.
If they had KNOWN MORE about the gunfire..?!
For crying out loud HQ had PERFECT radio comms the whole time and had REAL TIME VIDEO of the scene…!
If that is not far above the average situation awareness afforded HQ for a dynamic tactical situation, then TELL ME WHAT MIGHT BE…?
Maybe they feel they required a PSYCHIC on-scene, or a HobbitEsque all-seeing EYE..?
Maybe HQ required real-time radio with the ATTACKERS…?
THIS IS RIDICULOUS.
I’ve been retired for a while now, and I don’t have all the Field Manuals.
The incident in Benghazi has always looked like a “Raid” to me. That has a specific meaning in the military. I think it was a successful raid for the enemy. It knocked us back on our heels. For you John Boyd fans (I’m one), the enemy got “inside” our OODA Loop. We were reacting to them and never caught up.
We used to talk about three proximities of combat. I think they were “Close”, “Near” and “Far”. It looks to me like everyone was concentrated on the Close battle. Higher headquarters should have looked more at the Near and Far battles.
The most disturbing thing is that there has been no After Action Review to learn from this. That may have been a political decision, but it’s a bad decision.
This fighting and killing and dying is a hard business. Not everyone in the business should be there. Make a mistake at Costco, and sales might be down this month. Make a mistake in the military and lots of good people can get dead.
These two, plus Connie Cass, to whom this piece is attributed are all AP foreign correspondents.
Two of them are Salon contributors.
I perused the article.
It said nothing new since what we have heard “earlier this year”.
Gen Ham says, “with no distractions, etc” could mean admin telling him to not go in, for all we know, for all this hit piece tells us.
It is blaming the military.
If they’re going to do that, I hope whatever’s left of the top brass can decipher, and people reading can decipher, that means the military and whatever obstacles were directed at them from their supervisors.
I hope people can miraculously figure out that an operation of this significance, State Dept people in country, it hardly gets more sensitive than that, that the military does nothing on that level without approval, ad that saving a consulate, evacuating, protecting, is a very simple, deadly, perhaps, but simple operation, at least compared with what the writers here have been ordered to try to tell/sell us.
The military did not fail.
Sean Smith did not in any way fail.
Lord give us a break!
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