Webb is an Obama supporter:
http://www.brandontylerwebb.com/644/obama-bashing-using-navy-seals-as-campaign-pawns/
Webb wrote a tribute to Glen Doherty, his good friend who had co-authored a book with him. He’s got skin in this game.
Doesn’t mean what he said was correct, though. This article tries to judge motivations based on Webb’s statements. The article says:
‘However, there would be no motivation for the CIA, the Department of Defense, the State Department or the White House to withhold these resources, Webb says, aside from first establishing what was actually happening on the ground.
“It wouldn’t have been, ‘Don’t go help,’” he says. “It very likely would have been, ‘Hold tight, we need to figure out what’s going on.’”
We can’t assume what the motivations of all those officials were. Webb is saying that the motivation could have been to see what was happening first.
But contingency plans for the MILITARY (and not just the SEALS) include immediately moving assets into position to be able to handle any eventuality. And that standard protocol was interrupted once the head of the mission received the phone call from Stevens and put out the red alert that went out to hundreds of people within the pre-established communications network. If Africom leader had his crew ready as required by the contingency plans and was told not to sent assets to the region it was because somebody aborted the standard protocols before they could be implemented. Somebody DID authorize a drone from Italy to replace the drone that was already in Libya and had been surveilling the area, so Obama directly approved THAT cross-border activity but it’s been claimed that both drones were unarmed. This, even though Stevens had informed Hillary of the Benghazi police taking photos of the inside of the complex that morning. The very fact that there were accurate grenades being launched told everybody that this was a pre-planned attack.
As to whether the rules of engagement would have allowed an armed drone to fire on the people firing the mortars on the CIA annex, we had coordinates for where the mortars were coming from and had the ability to hit with an accuracy of several feet’s distance. I would find it hard to believe that totally unrelated innocent bystanders would simply be wandering around that area in the middle of the night watching the local militant firing mortars at the CIA annex. If these are the rules of engagement we follow when our diplomatic staff are attacked, we may as well just roll over and let them do whatever they want to us. When would anybody EVER be able to use firepower?
The gun that Woods fired was surely fired into the same location as he painted to have air fire, and Woods’ fire wasn’t contained to a very small area since it was flying horizontally rather than being dropped from above. Is Webb saying that Woods as a private contractor was doing what would have been forbidden by military rules of engagement?