Panetta Says Risk Impeded Deployment to Benghazi (Admin has painted itself into a corner)

New York Times ^ | 10/25/2012 | ELISABETH BUMILLER

[Tennessean4Bush]

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Thursday that he and top military commanders “felt very strongly” that deploying American forces to defend against the fatal attack last month on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was too risky because they did not have a clear picture of what was happening on the ground.

[Tennessean4Bush]

The damning thing - and damning to all sides - is the intentional and persistent lies from the admin in the next few weeks saying that it was a spontaneous demonstration sparked by a video. Panetta has now unwittingly admitted this was a lie. Everyone who is focused on that will agree that they willfully deceived the American people and the world for weeks. You and I are in agreement that what Panetta says now shows cowardice at best. But not everyone will agree to that, especially soccer moms. Everyone, however, will agree once they put two and two together that the admin lied consciously and persistently for two weeks. Panetta is counting on the fact that this will devolve into a classic hawk versus dove argument for the next week. And one more week is all they need.

[Tennessean4Bush]

They're either lying or cowards.

At the risk of putting too fine a point on this -- they are lying. They may or may not be cowards. And, they are hoping that for the next week they can allow us to vent along the classic and well worn hawk versus dove battle lines. They are happy to let all who are focused on Benghazi do just that for one more week. What I am saying is that if we focus our debating energy on them being cowards, we will miss the wide open flank they have left on what all would agree on is that they lied. They are hoping no one will put two and two together.

[Wuli]

Panetta is a foggy bottom todie from way back, in addition to being a very “useful idiot” for some very well known California Marxists his whole “public service” career.

A few days ago he was promoting the line (FOR the White House) that they lacked sufficient Intel to act.

Now that claim has been morphed into a claim of too much risk to act.

The former can be held to be a cause of the latter, but most likely, from the evidence so far, only if the risk of ANY casualities by the rescuers was too much risk on the basis of a ton of second guessing about what was not known, in addition to what was known.

If zero casualties by the rescuers was the risk that was too high, then that as much as said the lives of the victims of the attack were not worth ANY rescue effort, or even any aid in their defense, because THAT, AID IN THEIR DEFENSE, NOT “rescue” necessarily was what they were asking for. In fact some of the best available assistance that was not brought to their aid was assistance from the air, to blast the nests of the attackers around our victims, so that they might even have a chance of pulling themselves away from the area.

Someone said no.

Who EXACTLY said NO and WHO had the final approval of that and who even later accepted that call as O.K.

Those are the questions every American should expect answers to.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

What’s going to be said when the first commercial airliner is downed by one the “lost” Man-Pads?”

[Heart-Rest]

"And Mr Panetta, does the Fire Department wait and see how big a fire gets before they go out on a call for help? "

Contrast this administration's talk and actions with the Police Officers and Fire Department heroes in the first 9/11 terrorist attack.    Back then, they didn't say it was too risky to go in to the towers, because they might not come out.    They just went in, and saved many lives.

B.O. must go.

[Larousse2]

Report: Obama Watched Benghazi Attack From 'Situation Room'

Justice with Judge Jeanine 10/27/12 - CIA talks about latest news about Benghazi coverup

Judge Jeanine speaking with Charles Woods, father of Benghazi slain SEAL Ty Woods

Judge Jeanine asks White House 'How do you sleep at night'

[morphing libertarian]

If you want to get more military insight into Benghazi and other military issues, I recommend the radio show on KFI LA AM 640 8-10 Sat and Sunday nights, Brian Suits, A Dark Secret Place.

[cherokee1]

Panetta’s actions can always be understood in light of his history in the Senate of being an anti-military democrat hack. Since Obamuzzie’s goal is reduction of the military Panetta is an appropriate choice. What’s disgusting is watching him try to “talk a good game “ of defense.

[rfp1234]

Admiral Clapper? Is the DNI getting set up?

[PieterCasparzen]

God bless you and your Son, I thank him for his service. Unfortunately, you have been misled by the disinformation campaigns of the New Left (let's abbreviate it NLDC).

In order to understand what the New Left is, you will have to start googling the phrase "New Left" and researching, following links and reading.

Unfortunately failure to send correct assets is and equal politician flaw. My son was in Gulf War I, in Saudi Arabia a week after the Kuwait invasion by SH. He was there 8 months and took part in the assault into Iraq. In December 2002 I asked him how many troops he felt should be sent in by Bush. He said 450,000. At the time Shinsecki was in the process of being fired for arguing we should have over 300,000. Then after a year of a big mess in Iraq, Bremmer said we should have had 1/2 million. Siiigh!!

Look the loss ratio, that is key: America kicked Iraq's @ss. Part of the NLDC is to get America to back down, second guess themselves, worry about spending too much, worry about potential lives lost.

Now that my son is in Afghanistan AGAIN (spent 8 months there in 2006), I am really pixxed that we didn’t finish the job in Afghanistan instead of the Iraq side trip.

Think about that nation - it is too backward to have military targets other than individual Taliban for the most parts. We ran out of bombardment targets quickly. The Taliban and associated groups can move from country to country. Unless they were completely eradicated, they will always come back; they have modern weapons and are determined, agressive and tricky, and Afghanistan is a big country with places to hide. The Afghan people are all muslims, but perhaps would be ambivolent to foreigners because they are so simple. They do not have the concept of rule of law that Western Civilization has so Afghanistan will never be "safe" for Westerners. The trouble is we can train them to be able to keep out foreign fighters by giving them modern ideas and military techniques, but at the end of the day, revolutionary ideas are pushed into societies by NLDP anyway - after all, they've invaded America as well. They actually need the Gospel more than anything else.

All politicians have their own agenda. We know Obama’s, but I fear that Romney is too eager to bloody the nose of Russia (”our number one enemy”) and Iran. My son has two years to go on his 20, and I pray he makes it out in one piece.

God bless your son and thank him again for his service. The core of Russian leadership continues to oppose us in most every country, as does islam, and that war is fought in seemingly senseless places and very often through proxies. This has been the pattern for decades. It's complex to say the least. Without a doubt, having a man in the WH is who is part of the New Left is much more dangerous than having someone who is not. We just have to remember that the New Left and globalist, intellectual elites comprise thousands of what are called NGO's or non-governmental organizations. All over the world they are actually influencing governments and operating with virtually no awareness by the general public, whose votes are nowhere near as influential as the NGO influence operations. Most of these organizations are permeated by the New Left.

Here is a post to get you started.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2951258/posts

If you look at who the players, you will see that the revolution was externally manufactured and the revolutionaries themselves are mere pawns. This has been the case with numerous revolutions over the past 20 years that came and went so quickly in the U.S. news cycle that hardly anyone knows or cares about them.

Also, be sure to visit

http://www.cfr.org/

Be sure to look at the About section, look for lists of names for boards of directors, leadership and members. You'll see that there is contact and shared interests between governments and big business. While the U.S. has a huge influence, business interests and "causes" tend to span national boudaries in the realm of bodies like cfr. Most often such NGO's are started with good intentions but go horribly wrong as their arrogance blinds them to their immorality and wrongness.

CFR is one of the most influential policy-making institutions in terms of foreign policy, but there are literally thousands of these unelected NGOs pursing globalist, elitist interests around the globe. Notice their agendas. Also, you will note that they are firmly embedded into the U.S. political landscape.

I give all this information in the hope that you will learn more about what is going on behind the scenes and that knowledge might give you comfort as well as a call to spread the truth to those in the military who are not aware of the ultimately anti-American New Left and how it has permeated the Democratic party and much of American society.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

[Tennessean4Bush]

What cannot be argued any more now that Panetta has claimed that the risk was too great to act, is the following:

• The administration lied beginning THREE DAYS LATER when they said this was a spontaneous demonstration caused by a youtube video.
• It was not only a lie, it was a deliberate lie.
• It was not only a deliberate lie, it was a persistent, deliberate lie.
• It was not only a persistent, deliberate lie, the lie was told multiple times by multiple people - including the President himself - for weeks.
• It was not only a persistent, deliberate lie told for weeks by multiple people, but it was told directly to the American people and to the world after numerous other sources across the spectrum were saying the opposite.
• Not only was it all that, but they also found a scapegoat - an American citizen exercising his first Amendment rights - and jailed him for it.
• Then, with malice and forethought, released an ad paid for with taxpayer dollars to the entire world scapegoating the helpless US citizen they knowingly jailed for cynical and nefarious reasons.

There is no cover for this. The President and his Administration, for whatever reason, lied deliberately and persistently for two weeks, scapegoated a US citizen to the world, and now want to run out the clock due to this nonsense about "let's wait until we have all the facts." BALONEY! You did not mind yourself to wait for all the facts before you jailed and scapegoated this US citizen!!! These guys should be IMPEACHED, NOW!!!!

[Paladin2]

"Admin has painted itself into a corner"

More like it has hoisted its empty chair to hang off the end of a Navy yardarm.

[PieterCasparzen]

What’s going to be said when the first commercial airliner is downed by one the “lost” Man-Pads?”

Sorry, that cat is rrrrrrrr outta the bag on that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-portable_air-defense_systems

MANPADS are all over already for decades, you can probably buy them on the street in Istanbul. Everyone knows for a long time now that U.S. and their NGOs are supporting the Syrian rebels and the Russians and their NGOs are supporting Assad.

Kaddafi's stockpiles were raided, of course, that happened many moons ago. Everyone knows weapons were going to Syria via Turkey, which still functions as a crossroads after thousands of years.

IMHO, the meeting with the Turkish foreign minister was simply the bait in the kidnap trap for poor Ambassador Stevens. If NGOs set this up, neither Stevens nor the Turk would know about the trap, so there would be no possibility of the Turk tipping him off.

[PieterCasparzen]

Everyone knows for a long time now that U.S. and their NGOs are supporting the Syrian rebels and the Russians and their NGOs are supporting Assad.

My comment above is not clear enough.

When I say "U.S. and their NGOs"... IMHO, this operation is part of the overall 20 years of revolutions that were cooked up by NGOs, specifically the Soros and leftist networks. The GWB administration, IMHO, pursued this because the likes of CFR and the "spread democracy" elitists permeate the Republican party. It is simply conventional wisdom amongst U.S. elites.

The difference is that the New Left Democratic Shadow Party is participating knowing that it is a ruse to get U.S. policy shifted towards working with leftist and Soros NGO networks and their true goal is New World Order which entails an end to U.S. hegemony, while the Republican elites do not see through the "spreading democracy" ruse. They actually think they are doing the opposite - extending U.S. hegemony.

Nowhere is this more clear in the mideast, in the multi-layer elaborate scheming of the NGOs. The Conservative grassroots in the U.S. is fuming, as their news media concurs, that the scandal about the Arab spring is that jihadists are coming to power. This concern is even echoed inside government. However, careful research indicates that NGO players continue to chip away at marginalizing the islamic revolutionaries in the new governments - all the while allowing the militants to continue to be part of the mix, of course preserving them for future needs of the NGO networks. How else does one explain a new Libyan government that slowly but surely is taking shape as one run by people educated in the U.S. and Eastern Europe ? The only answer is that not only do islamic militant figures pervade the new government, but NGO figures do as well. We simply don't hear about that from U.S. news services at all.

The strategic pattern of NGO leftists and Soros has always been to get inside of a government, subvert it by making the NGOs plans the government's, then actually use the government to do a large part of their work. It also spans countries: one subverted government's intelligence service can be used to subvert another nation's government.

Take USAID - it thinks it's using NGOs, but in reality, the NGOs are using it.

Gets complicated, but it's really simple if one keeps one's eye on the ball.

[piasa]

Obama himself had to issue an order to cancel a rescue effort.

[jwalsh07]

Panetta is fos. 40 years ago we were taught every day that nobody gets left behind and my nephew tells me that they are still taught the same thing. The Army hasn’t changed but the shmucks running things have.

[piasa]

Obama had seven hours to figure out what was going on. The claim they couldn't do anything because they didn't know what was going on is ludicrous.

Fact is, they had MONTHS to figure out what was going on, with multiple attack attempts and requests for security and that's a long time to make plans assuming you actually bother to prep for anything. That they sent home what real security they had against the wishes of the ambassador tells us that not only did they not prepare for a serious armed attack on our mission there, they deliberately went out of their way to undermine security, and that means they really didn't want to know what was going on even BEFORE the attack, much less during it. No interest in it whatsoever. Every other western country with an embassy there figured it out right quick but we didn't because the White House has at minimum been AWOL or worse, has been engaged in sabotage.

[piasa]

Panetta couldn’t give that order unless the pres ordered him to halt a rescue. He can recommend the president give the order but he has to have the order.
A rescue effort is automatic for an ambassador.

[piasa]

Iraq was not a “side trip” ... Iraq via Iran was where al Qaeda active leadership went after Tora Bora, and even before. Iraq was where we Abu Nidal was, and he had attacked the US before. Iraq was where the perp in charge of the WTC bombing of 1993 was. Iraq was where some of those involved in the bombing of the USS Cole were caught. And Iraq was where Zawahiri was, and he was the guy involved in numerous things, including the millennium plot to blow up the LAX airport, blow up Us facilities in Jordan and was the guy who assassinated US Aid official Lawrence Foley a year before the war.