(I just posted this on the CBS story in their comments.)
I was writing about this within days of the attack. This is the start of my piece published in PJ Media. The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor; the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.
Once the alarm is sent—in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi; dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EUCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission. That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.
No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.
On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.
Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya; such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.
How might this process have played out in the White House?
If, at the 5:00 p.m. Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta and Vice President Biden, President Obama said about Benghazi: “I think we should not go the military action route,” meaning that no CBA will be granted, then that is it. Case closed. Another possibility is that the president might have said: “We should do what we can to help them ... but no military intervention from outside of Libya.” Those words then constitute “standing orders” all the way down the chain of command, via Panetta and General Dempsey to General Ham and the subordinate commanders who are already gearing up to rescue the besieged outpost.
When that meeting took place, it may have seemed as if the consulate attack was over, so President Obama might have thought the situation would stabilize on its own from that point forward. If he then goes upstairs to the family quarters, or otherwise makes himself “unavailable,” then his last standing orders will continue to stand until he changes them, even if he goes to sleep until the morning of September 12.
Nobody in the chain of command below President Obama can countermand his “standing orders” not to send outside military forces into Libyan air space. Nobody. Not Leon Panetta, not Hillary Clinton, not General Dempsey, and not General Ham in Stuttgart, Germany, who is in charge of the forces staging in Sigonella.
Perhaps the president left “no outside military intervention, no cross-border authority” standing orders, and then made himself scarce to those below him seeking further guidance, clarification, or modified orders. Or perhaps he was in the Situation Room watching the Predator videos in live time for all seven hours. We don’t yet know where the president was hour by hour.
But this is 100 percent sure: Panetta and Dempsey would have executed a rescue mission order if the president had given those orders.
And like the former SEALs in Benghazi, General Ham and all of the troops under him would have been straining forward in their harnesses, ready to go into battle to save American lives.
The execute orders would be given verbally to General Ham at AFRICOM in Stuttgart, but they would immediately be backed up in official message traffic for the official record. That is why cross-border authority is the King Arthur’s Sword for understanding Benghazi. The POTUS and only the POTUS can pull out that sword.
We do know that, about 10 PM Washington time, the President was in touch with Secretary Clinton. We know this from her statements.
And we also know that, within thirty minutes of this conversation, Clinton initiated the protest demonstration/anti-Islam video cover-up via Twitter.
It seems a reasonable assumption, then, that the subject of the phone conversation between the President and the Secretary of State was the formulation of a baseless lie to camouflage the actual circumstances of the attack.
Evidently, the only action the President took regarding the Benghazi attack at the time it was underway was to authorize the issuance of a cover-up based on a known falsehood!
Beautiful. So glad you put that on the CBS site for the low info voters to read, too.
-PJ
I believe what you wrote is true. Why hasn’t Obama had to answer those questions?
Bass Tuhd.
The fact that our people from Tripoli were hung up in the airport in Benghazi reflects how poor our relationship was with the GOL and how little control the government in Tripoli had over Benghazi. The bottom line is that our people should never have been there given the inability of the host government to protect them.
Bttt
Travis, you know as well as I do that your post is the what but not the why. The real WHY needs to be exposed. How many more AMERICANS WILL DIE planned DEATHS FOR FILTHY POLITICIAN TRAITORS AND POLITICAL GENERALS WHO ALLOW AND EVEN PLAN THE MURDERS OF OUR OWN TROOPS TO PLEASE THEIR MASTERS? THE UNDERLYING FACTOR IN THE DEATHS OF SO MANY SEALs IS PERSONAL WITH OBAMA and has been since they blew away his little somali pirate when they pushed the envelope and pushed back against his direct orders. It was an ‘in your face’ to him and he has never forgiven it.
Thanks for this. It cannot be posted enough, yet where are the resignations? Where are the Democrats that still love America? Could you imagine knowing this and still working for Obama?
I can’t. It’s despicable.
Tell me again why we haven’t heard from General Ham? He is one person who could clarify a whole bunch of stuff. So far as I can tell: crickets. In my view he’s not wearing his stars very well. Another job for the next president is making sure all these cut-and-runners are earning their retirement checks by cleaning up their last FUBAR.
“Nobody in the chain of command below President Obama can countermand his “standing orders” not to send outside military forces into Libyan air space”
They can if they want to do what is right and face the consequences as a patriot and American hero instead of a Bammy enabler.