Posted on 10/25/2012 6:47:10 AM PDT by shortstop
American life must be cheap.
At least in the valuation of the White House and the other big buildings around Washington.
Must be the men and women sent overseas mean nothing. We’ll meet your coffin at Andrews, if there are TV cameras, but damned if we’ll come to your rescue.
That’s what we learned at Benghazi.
As details have come out in dribs and drabs, each new revelation has illustrated the uncomfortable fact that we left those men to fight and die alone.
We did not defend them, we did not relieve them, we just watched them. Our drone circled overhead, providing a real-time video feed, but it did not fire its missiles, it was not used to guide in a relief force, it just took pictures.
Grisly souvenirs of a gutless administration.
For most of a year, our Libyan ambassador and various members of his security detachment warned of danger and pleaded for assistance. Time and time again the people on the ground said it wasn’t safe and they needed protection. Time and time again people in Washington declined the requests. Instead of increasing our security forces there, the administration cut them.
And then the attack came.
On September 11, in a concerted and effective three-pronged attack, well-rehearsed terrorist soldiers moved against our consulate.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
We were outgunned and defenseless. Our “safe room” became a death trap and our “safe house” was a point of ambush.
Almost immediately, the consulate contacted Washington and passed steady information about the attack. Maybe Washington didn’t need to be told. At some point before or during the attack, a Predator drone began circling the fight, sending video back to Washington.
The State Department quickly and repeatedly sent secure e-mail updates to senior officials and organizations across the government – to include the White House situation room. Two hours into an eight-hour attack, the State Department reported that an al Qaeda-linked local militia had taken credit for the action.
Much attention has been paid to what the White House and senior officials did, not to what they didn’t do.
What they did do is swear for almost two weeks that the attack was a passionate outgrowth of protests over a YouTube video. Over and over, including on a taxpayer-funded ad in Pakistan, the president and secretary of State apologized for the video and condemned it as disrespectful to Islam.
That’s what they did.
And it’s worthy of attention.
But even more worthy is what they didn’t do.
And what they didn’t do is help the besieged Americans in Benghazi.
They let them die, live on surveillance TV.
The fight, we have learned in the last two days, lasted not two or six hours, but eight. For eight hours our men and women were under fire. At the end of those eight hours, apparently from some sort of explosive, the last two Americans – former Navy SEALs – lost their lives.
While we did nothing.
Yes, the government had endangered the Libyan mission by gutting its security and denying its requests for more.
But, yes, when the attack began, and for a couple of hours after, American forces seem to have been well within quick-response distance.
Though our Sixth Fleet supposedly asserts American power in the Mediterranean and northern Africa, it has been gutted to such an extent that it is almost meaningless. President Obama says this has something to do with horses and bayonets.
Almost any naval vessel, however, could send missiles to Benghazi. Further, U.S. Navy aircraft in Spain and Crete seem to be within easy range of Libya.
Not a one of them was sent to relieve the besieged Americans.
But that’s not the worst part. In a situation like this, the Navy was the junior varsity. Sitting an hour’s flying time north of Benghazi is an entire U.S. Air Force base in Italy.
It is incomprehensible that over the course of an eight-hour battle in which Americans were fighting and dying that not a single one of those aircraft was scrambled. We had attack aircraft, fighters and gunships a plenty, parked on the pavement in Italy, and none of them were brought to bear.
Further, we have an airborne Brigade Combat Team in Italy. Not a one of those soldiers was moved. The only report of military response to the Benghazi attack was the activation of a quick-response force in Stuttgart, Germany.
But it wasn’t that quick and it wasn’t that close. And by the time it got to Sicily the fight had been over for several hours.
The bottom line: We didn’t do anything.
Which means we are either impotent posers, incapable of actually pulling our sword from its sheath, or we decided to let them die.
Either our head was so far up our backside that through several hours of fighting nobody had the brains or the balls to order a sortie, or we just decided to let them die.
Neither explanation is very comforting.
Neither explanation is consistent with American values.
Our ethic is to leave no man behind.
In this situation, we left a lot of men behind, and we took pictures.
And then we blamed it all on a movie.
When we knew that it was a terrorist attack that had nothing to do with a movie.
That’s not the American way. It’s the way things are done in Washington under the current regime, it’s not the American way.
American life must be cheap.
At least in the eyes of the people in charge.
What in the hell do you mean WE.
YOU elected this POS.
YOU called us racist when we questioned his background.
YOU and every ilk, like you, that voted this muslim in
KILLED
THEM.
Benghazi is Obama’s Blackhawk down.
Like his pal Bill Clinton, Obama just let them die.
Do we need 4 more years of this?
I don’t.
We must not allow that to happen.
We must not allow that to happen.
Was the drone armed? I thought we could have at least crashed it into the bulk of the attackers. Were any other drones available?
There is a rancid stench of treason in the air...hanging over our nation.
An American Lament in 2012
http://www.jeffhead.com/lament.htm
You know, I watched an interview of the LTC who was the head of the DOD team in Benghazi who was asking for more security and who then had his own team pulled out a few weeks before the attack.
He was asked straight up that if the Ambassador knew how dangerous the situation in Benghazi was, why did he go there on 911? The answer that LTC gave was, I believe, very revealing...but in his own way. He said,
“Yes, he knew it was dangerous, but I believe that his commitment to ‘complete the mission’ took him there.”
The obvious question then is...what was the “mission?”
I now believe they were negotiationg directly with Al Quida operatives to run guns to the rebels in Syria...but to the Islamic Fundamental rebels, who themselves are Al Quida sympatthizers and that the whole thing went bad.
There is something like this...so deep and dark...that is driving this administrations actions. Something they will lie blatantly about...and brazingly...to try and keep it from coming to light.
Simple incompetence does not make sense here. It may answer some questons, but not nearly all.
We must Eradicate Sharia Law
http://www.jeffhead.com/eradicate.htm
Obama slept. Americans died.
This also demonstrates with abject clarity that when it came right down to a choice, Obama chose Islamists over Americans.
And to add insult to injury the POTUS went to bed because he had to jet off to Vegas for a fundraiser. I truely, truely ,truely do not understand the mentality of the people that are still supporting this clown.
Simple: it didn't happen to them. The EBT Americans, the slaves to the government, live comfortably in their McMansions eating lobster and wagyu beef purchased with magical cards that are refilled every month. They drive expensive cars they leased and never intend to pay for. They watch Jersey Shore and Honey Boo Boo on 55" LCD TVs with surround sound. They have high speed internet and unlimited text and talk plans on their government-provided cell phones.
Obama gives all of this to them. He's a spring from which greatness comes. He's their God.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, the taxpaying wage slaves who commute to our workplaces to sit in front of computers for 8 hours a day only to have 30% of our wages taken from us are forced to pinch pennies, stockpile foodstuffs and ammo, and pray for a responsible administration capable of turning the tides back in our favor.
Benghazi is a sign that America has strayed from everything that once made her great. We no longer care when four men die needlessly despite begging for help. We watch with zeal like driving past a bloody car wreck as an embassy is consumed by a violent cult, and we think, "Thank God that wasn't us." Besides, Honey Boo Boo is on in 5 minutes.
Pray for our salvation.
Bob Lonsberry is a local radio talk show jock in Rochester, NY, and occasionally ventures to a national audience. He gets it.
If you watched Ann Coulter on Lou Dobbs’s show last night, she said what was really sad was those two soldiers on the roof of the building holding off the terrorists for several hours, undoubtedly believing that “help was on the way”.
They should have trusted their instincts instead of their leader, who abandoned them to face death.
The Us could have been there in an hour once the order was given with armed drones, AC-30 Gunship (fire in the sky), jet fighters, even boots on the ground contingency group...Obviously, the order was never given...
And to add insult to injury the POTUS went to bed because he had to jet off to Vegas for a fundraiser. I truely, truely ,truely do not understand the mentality of the people that are still supporting this clown.
He could sleep then, but will in his words “ pull an allnighter “ for his own campaign purposes.
MSM won’t ask him about that.
Here is my opinion, and the stance I would make if I was in the White House..
1 American life is worth 100K of theirs, whoever they may be..
unless you are a stupid hippie that put yourself purposely into harms way, then our military is here to defend and rescue you...
PERIOD.
These points are non negotiable..
Until our leadership (and this includes generals and admirals especially) start to take this attitude, we will always be a target..
I asked my russian friend what russia would do under these circumstances.. he replied “ I don’t know, it has never happened to us”...
I then asked him why it had never happened to them. He replied “Because we would have killed them all”..
And there is the answer, in plain english.
How any American can read this column and still vote for Obama, is beyond my comprehension.
Simple: it didn’t happen to them. The EBT Americans, the slaves to the government, live comfortably in their McMansions eating lobster and wagyu beef purchased with magical cards that are refilled every month. They drive expensive cars they leased and never intend to pay for. They watch Jersey Shore and Honey Boo Boo on 55” LCD TVs with surround sound. They have high speed internet and unlimited text and talk plans on their government-provided cell phones.
Obama gives all of this to them. He’s a spring from which greatness comes. He’s their God.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, the taxpaying wage slaves who commute to our workplaces to sit in front of computers for 8 hours a day only to have 30% of our wages taken from us are forced to pinch pennies, stockpile foodstuffs and ammo, and pray for a responsible administration capable of turning the tides back in our favor.
Well stated and so true.
If I've connected all the dots correctly (TV, radio, talking heads, news reports combined) , the ambassador was there to track down missing American weapons shipped over there to aid the Muslim spring. They went to the wrong people. (These are the weapons that were eventually used in the assault. Lots of AK-47's.)
If all this is correct, it was better to leave the four Americans as collateral damage than to admit another Fast and Furious type debacle. If those who knew of the debacle are all dead, the assault could be blamed on anything - like a youtube video.... or something.
The last thing Oboma needs this close to the election is a terrorist attack - with the terrorist using the weapons HE gave them.
John Kass
Benghazi not as sexy as Trump, Allred
- October 25, 2012 - What news stories are perching up high on the top rocks, screeching down at undecided voters with less than two weeks left in a long presidential campaign?
Read at:
To get past the subscribe just click your Print Preview and scroll down.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-1025-20121025,0,3235319.column
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.