My reply to Mr. Timmerman on the FPM comment thread:
KRT, throwing the onus over to State is going for a head fake. Yes, state needs to be involved if they are going to ask for permission BEFORE crossing the Libyan border. But for a crisis like that night in Benghazi, in a country that is in a state of anarchy with no central govt control, it’s not necessary to get permission from the “Libyan government” (sic) first. All that is required is to obtain Cross-Border Authority from the Commander in Chief. Did State ask Pakistan for permission before the OBL raid? Of course not. Obama granted the military CBA, and that was that.
On the night of Benghazi, when Obama, Hillary and Panetta met in the Oval Office, it was believed that Ambassador Stevens had been taken by forces loyal to AQ. This is a disaster far greater than the number of lives eventually lost. An ambassador is equal in rank to a four-star general, and Stevens was (it’s thought) involved in running guns to Syria. My point is we’re talking about a crisis much greater than the possible loss of some American spooks and contractors.
But what did Obama do? He left the Oval Office and is not seen again until he’s on AF1 on the way to Las Vegas. IOW, he hid all night, with a missing ambassador believed to be in AQ hands, so that he could not be put on the spot to either grant or withhold CBA. It’s not up to Hillary to ask or not ask the “Libyan government” (sic) for permission to cross the Libyan border. It’s up to POTUS and only POTUS to either grant or deny CBA. No CBA, no rescue mission by assets located outside of Libya. Period.
I am amazed that CBA and Obama’s location that night STILL is not the central focus of this discussion. No CBA = no rescue = Obama hid like a coward, writing off the mission in Libya, likely already planning to blame it on the video.
“Benghazi’s Smoking Gun? Only President Can Give
‘Cross-Border Authority’”
https://pjmedia.com/blog/benghazis-smoking-gun-only-president-can-give-%e2%80%98cross-border-authority%e2%80%99/
I wrote about this just a few weeks after Benghazi. The PJMedia article has been re-archived, and no longer shows the earlier comments thread that ran to 100+ replies.
This is the beginning of the article I wrote back then:
The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor — the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.
Once the alarm is sent — in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EUCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.
That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.
No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.
On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.
Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya — such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.
How might this process have played out in the White House?
The rest is at the PJMedia link.
“”On the night of Benghazi, when Obama, Hillary and Panetta met in the Oval Office””
How do we know that? I’ve heard Panetta testify about arriving at the WH before or after they received the news. He said it was a prearranged meeting with the president. I’ve never heard that Hillary was anywhere that afternoon and evening except at the State Department. Lindsay Graham missed his chance here to ask Panetta if she was at the White House....
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/11/now-know-president-obama-was-mia-on-benghazi.html
“”Panetta and the chairman of the joint chiefs, Martin Dempsey, told Graham they didn’t sleep, but said they didn’t know if Obama did. You would think a presidential conscience would keep him awake and engaged until he knew what had happened in Benghazi. You would be wrong. Instead, the two officials said they had only one, 30-minute conversation with Obama. It began at around 5 p.m. Washington time, 90 minutes after the first attack started, and they never spoke to him again that night.
The president’s only instructions, Panetta said, were, “Do whatever you need to do,” though he left the details “up to us.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doesn’t that sum up his presidency? He gets the big salary and the perks and the ALL IMPORTANT LEGACY of being the first black man (which was the first lie) in the presidency and leaves everything else to the underlings he put in place to be sure they do a good job of destroying the country according to his wishes. Panetta should have told him to sit his *** down and issue the authority he needed to order the military assets to Benghazi.