Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette - the former commander of Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3, U.S.S. John C. Stennis) - was relieved of his post after contending that aircraft from his strike group could have made it to the scene in Tripoli in time to aid/rescue the trapped personnel. Officially, Gaouette was forcibly-retired for making "racially-insensitive remarks" and public use of profanity; the real reason he was forced out was for daring to contradict administration propaganda about Benghazi.1
This little fairy tale keeps getting told with every one of these accounts. It is demonstrably untrue, as the Admiral and his carrier task group were in the Arabian Sea supporting operations in Afghanistan when the attack on Benghazi ocurred. So, he probably was relieved following a pissing contest with the skipper of his flagship as has been reported elsewhere. This one is so easy to bebunk that I am chalking everything else up as nonsense until actual facts emerge. These stories are certainly suffering from a facts shortage.
This article puts a number on it and seems a lot more comprehensive.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/top-generals-obama-is-purging-the-military/
“Boykin referred to recent reports that Obama has purged some 197 officers in the past five years.”
How many first-person accounts will you be requiring before you believe anything?
Or will you serially mark them all down to "disgruntled employees"?
Gaouette’s relief was unusual and based on the complaint of a man he’d dressed down a bit for his lack of skill handling the aircraft carrier. The poor driving skills were testified to by everyone on the bridge, apparently, but Gaouette was the one who ended up in trouble.
And saying “we could have helped” in Benghazi is not necessarily a statement that “we SHOULD have had that mission.”
It is not unlikely that a commander, in disbelief at the amount of time that rescue operation could have had in Benghazi, might have sarcastically said that ~considering how much time there was~ WE could have pulled off that rescue mission.”
It would be a bit like so many data firms have been saying about the ObamaCare roll out: “Given 3 years, we could have pulled that off for a whole lot less than half a billion dollars.”
I’m not saying that’s what went down with Gaoette, but it would have been a reasonable sarcastic comment. Being in the Arabian Sea would have been no obstacle to such a statement. With a 2100 mile range and a 1000 mph speed, and the aid of refuelers, a Super Hornet could have been there in a reasonable amount of time....3-4 hours if at the time they were on the west side of the Arabian sea, double that if on the east.