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Gates is a political whore...is he calling the military themslves “cartoonish” because they said it could have been done?! Gates is the cartoon but he is not very funny. Anyone who works for Obama is a whore including Gates.

I believe the person who was actually on the ground risking his life over Gates...

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According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight ... They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.

Official: We knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go”

Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour’s flight.

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack.

...Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi ... And so they missed the flight ... They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

I have a question. Who and what was on that C-130? Apparently it did fly to Benghazi according to that testimony.

I found the answer to my own question about the C-130. It was apparently a cargo plane owned by Libya.

Diplomat: US Team Stopped From Going to Benghazi
After the first word of the attack in Benghazi, a seven-member security team, including two military personnel, flew from Tripoli to Benghazi. Upon their arrival, they learned that Stevens was missing and the situation had calmed after the first attack, according to a Pentagon timeline released last year.
Meanwhile, a second team was preparing to leave on a Libyan C-130 cargo plane from Tripoli to Benghazi when Hicks said he learned from the Libyan prime minister that Stevens was dead. The Libyan military agreed to transport additional personnel as reinforcements to Benghazi on its cargo plane, but Hicks complained the special forces were told not to make the trip.
"They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it," Hicks told GOP committee staff. Pressed on why, he said, "I guess they just didn't have the right authority from the right level."

The first flight mentioned must have been the chartered plane Doherty and the others took. Which they did without any authorization. The fact that it is still not entirely clear and that it takes an hour of internet searches just to find those vague accounts shows how many questions remain unanswered.