"It's not a scandal if we don't report it."
Posted on 11/04/2012 4:34:00 AM PST by maggief
Sources who have debriefed the team that was at the CIA annex the night of the attack in Benghazi say that the CIA operators from the Global Response Staff, or GRS, were equipped with Mark 48 machine guns and had two types of laser capability. Each weapon had both a “passive” as well as a “visible” laser that could be used against the Libyan attackers.
Fox News has learned the guns were fitted with PEQ-15 lasers. The “passive” laser is not visible to the naked eye but can help team members identify hostile forces when the shooter is wearing NODS, or Night Observation Device attached to their helmet. The visible laser system places a red dot on the attacker and warns the attacker not to shoot, encouraging them to flee the scene. US troops often use the visible laser to scare children or other civilians who find themselves in the middle of combat activity. When civilians see the laser they often back off in order not to be shot.
The GRS team that was present at the CIA annex provided security for the CIA station, as they do around the world. They are highly trained in countersurveillance, close target reconnaissance and in depth reconnaissance. Enemy fighters have learned in Afghanistan and Iraq to use their cell phones to follow or intercept these “passive” lasers without having night vision or NODS.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
"It's not a scandal if we don't report it."
What was the mission in Benghazi prior to the attacks? What is the timeline/response (or lack thereof) from each “representative”/bureaucrat during the slaughter? Why the pre-meditated, coordination and amplification of lies as to the root cause of the event?
Many, many more questions not asked, answers not forthcoming.
TREASON - aid, comfort and weapons to enemies combined with direct attacks on amendment 1.
TREASON - like this republic has never seen before...in real-time, continuous, ongoing, unresolved.
FUBO
Ftheexcusemakers
What representation?
“—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. “
Counterterrorism team not called upon to help....
Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.
A third potential responder from a counter-terror force stationed in Europe says components of AFICOM — the military’s Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany — were working on course of action during the assault. But no plan was put to use.
“Forces were positioned after the fact but not much good to those that needed it,” the military source told CBS News.
“The response process was isolated at the most senior level,” says an official referring to top officials in the executive branch. “My fellow counterterrorism professionals and I (were) not consulted.”
What I get from the Fox News article and other reports from the major news outlets, is the impression that , somehow the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and EVERYONE involved with the months of run up through the attack were merely incompetent and unprepared. Is this the picture they’re now trying to paint? That to me, is utterly preposterous that all of these agencies were THAT INCOMPETENT at the same time where the Benghazi consulate was concerned!
Furthermore, the US military is the most formidable fighting force on the planet (BAD-ASS)). As you well know, they are prepared for every possible contingency—and even the ones that “aren’t possible”. I believe as you do. These forces are assembled, equipped and trained for such an event as Benghazi, were ready to go, but were stopped cold by the lack of orders needed from the very top.
There were drones, but there were no ARMED drones.
Could the drone be crashed into the mortar location? Or is the price of a drone more than Obama is willing to pay for the lives of Americans?
To me, it’s still all about cross-border authority not being given.
Nothing I’ve seen yet cannot be understood within the logic-prism of no CBA being granted. Nothing.
I keep waiting for a talking head to bring it up. Until they do, they indicate to me they don’t truly understand the politica/military context of the failure to send a MILITARY rescue mission to Benghazi.
The pathetic ad-hoc CIA “self rescue” sent from Tripoli was not bound by CBA rules, those assets were already “in country,” and at the disposal of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli.
But the QRF in Sigonella (if that is a true story) could not move toward Libyan air space without POTUS and only POTUS granting CBA, within actual orders.
These orders, if they exist, can be produced at any time.
Occam’s Razor tells me no execute orders or CBA were given, or they would have produced the proof long ago.
When you have an unloaded gun you can still use it as a club!
When I saw that I wondered what the heck we were doing there if the regime we installed would not let us do what is necessary to protect people ON WHAT IS LEGALLY CONSIDERED OUR OWN SOIL. With “friends” like that who needs enemies? If this is true, we knew far ahead of time that we could never keep our people safe - even before finding out at least a month ahead of time that the Libyan regime was not doing a thing to keep our people safe, and finding out the morning of 9-11 that the police (which is headed by an Ansar al Islam and Al Qaeda linked guy!) were even casing the inside of the complex in preparation for an attack!
The Libyan security for the complex was the February 17th Brigade, which is an Islamist group but considered the best that we could do to bridge the gap between the terrorists/Islamists and the so-called “freedom lovers” that we were led to believe we were going in to help. The best we can do in a country we just liberated is a group of Islamists (who, by definition, have the goal of instituting sharia, which violates everything the US Constitution stands for)?
We should not have been there. The US government had every indication that we should not have been there. Before the US ousted Ghadaffi, Ghadaffi had renounced terrorism and was actually one of the biggest helpers in reporting known terrorism. We were not in fear of any of Ghadaffi’s weapons when he was in charge. Now we’ve got 20,000 Manpads that are each capable of shooting down a commercial airliner, and at BEST we don’t know where they are (at worst, we’ve been giving them to Islamist terrorists in Syria and/or they have been distributed to terrorists all over the world, ready to use at any time).
Something else that stinks: Why is our CIA handing out timelines to media but blocking out Fox, which has been talking to eyewitnesses and could confirm the facts if they were accurate? How do you have a press event and cherry-pick only certain media allies to have access to that? That is EXACTLY what Saddam Hussein did; it’s written in the extensive notes that were recovered after he was ousted. CNN was his weapon against the US, Britain, and his own people.
Our government is acting just like Saddam Hussein’s.
No, Predators do not have a kamikazi dive bomber mode. And it’s too valuable up above. When the 25-odd Americans finally fled to the airport, it was critical that they have that eye in the sky.
The “legally considered our own soil” part might be problematic. Now, as far as I’m concerned, even an “unofficial” U.S. outpost should be protected 100% all the way.
But the legal weasels parsing for the White House will very likely be able to point out that neither the “annex” or the so-called “consulate” were on any official list of diplomatic missions.
Mind you, it would matter to me, Reagan, or either Bush. We’d go in guns-blazing to save Americans.
But the Obama weasels will look for any excuse to cover up Obama’s dereliction of duty.
And the rest of the media is letting that happen without complaining? That tells you what lapdogs they are right there.
Apparently, they are all so stupid that they are unable to draw the obvious conclusion that if the Obama WH can do that to FNC, they can do it to any of them.
Expletive delete.
Our enemies thank you for that information.
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_Benghazi.htm
So, what you are saying, if I understand right, is that only the President could give the orders that would allow US military forces to cross the border, or go into, Libya. Biden, Panetta, Dempsey and Ham could all talk about it, but only Obama could actually say that American military forces could go into Libya. Is that right? I realize that you are writing for professionals and journalists, but a lot of people here don’t have your experience with military and clandestine matters and need perhaps a simpler explanation.
Wasn’t the second one available, the first out of fuel. Couldn’t the drone running low on fuel have “landed” on the mortar team if it didn’t have a “dive bomer mode”? Not trying to be a “wise guy” but it seems like some kind of “out of box” response may have helped. If painting a laser on someone is used to make them run away, seems like a drone buzzing might cause aiming issues for a mortar team. I obviously don’t know anything about what I am asking, that is why I am asking you. Are you saying there is no way the low on fuel drone COULD have be used other than as a camera platform? If YOU were in control of the drone and saw YOUR team under fire from a mortar position, YOU would has simply flown away?
http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_Benghazi.htm
They can shutdown those cellphones in several ways... and they need to start training to do so.
LLS
First of all, we don’t know squat about the mortar team. It seems quite unlikely to me that Ty Woods on the roof was in direct line-of-sight of a martar team at all. Mortars are indirect fire weapons, it’s their safety to NOT be in sight of the target. A spotter forward corrects fire.
We are taking a half-dozen factoids, perhaps correctly or incorrectly jotted down by a few reporters who managed to talk to some of the other evacuees from Benghazi.
I have seen this for decades and decades. Fragmentary reporter jottings spun into all-encompassing theories.
No, a Predator will not be used to crash-land on a mortar team. No way. The eye in the sky is MUCH MUCH MUCH more valuable up above, than to be thrown away on a low-odds chance at a mobile mortar team. A team which can run away or be replaced by another team somewhere else at any time.
WIthout that eye in the sky, it’s very likely NONE of the Americans would have managed to escape to freedom. Nothing else can tell the escape convoy, “Turn now! THere is a checkpoint three blocks ahead around the corner!”
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