“The details of the standing orders were not presented. Crossing into a foreign country would seemingly be above what a regional General is authorized to do; this would also seemingly be above the authority of the SecDef.”
That was kind of my thinking. All the President has to do is nothing. And the rescue mission is impossible. So, if you parse it carefully, he did not “refuse” a request. That would take some action. He just did nothing. In a very narrow sense, that statement is true. And, he can order US troops to save lives (per his earlier claim). But without the cross-border authorization, the former order is meaningless.
That still doesn’t explain the “stand down” orders the Seals got.
A lot of this is still speculation.
Panetta could have authorized the “stand-down” order. As Panetta is not “in the White House”, the statement is correct...no one in the White House refused a request...but Panetta authorized an order for the Navy Seals to stand-down.
However, the POTUS didn’t authorize a rescue mission. He just let them die.
Also, IIRC the team that was sent from Tripoli could have been order by the State Dept.
Bottom line is they are just parsing words to hide the whole complete picture.
Another possible scenario is that after the initial attack subsided, (about an hour) they thought it was over, and decided no additional action was needed since help was on the way from Tripoli, hence no CBA was issued.
Later they found out they were wrong, but too late to get people there before the mortar fire hit the Seals.
They are all doing their best to muddy the truth, and I hope that Fox and the Republicans keep hammering on this.