Seaward wrote:
You think there was no point during the seven-hour attack that it became apparent it was an attack and not a riot that got a little overexcited?

Why do you keep referencing an angry protest? There was no angry protest. That was just extremely bad information we continued to hear for a week afterwards.

 d-usa wrote:
Seriously, if a bunch of extremist rednecks decided to attack a Russian consulate inside the United States, and Russia decides to respond by sending a bunch of warplanes into US air space and maybe drop a bomb or two onto US soil to stop the attacks all the people advocating these tactics would be screaming for bloody war against Russia.

 Seaward wrote:
Sure. But you're missing some key points. We could actually do that to Libya without fear of consequence. The same would not be true with anyone else doing it to us. I'm not suggesting we'd go to war over it or anything - though we might - but that we're a pretty powerful nation you generally don't want to bomb. Libya is not.

International law is pretty irrelevant if the primary enforcers choose to ignore it.

Sure. But you're missing some key points. We could actually do that to Libya without fear of consequence.

 d-usa wrote:
In this thread:

People who claim that tactics used in active war zones such as flying F-16's around dropping flares and then bombs on insurgents are perfectly viable options for violating the international borders of a sovereign country.

Seriously, if a bunch of extremist rednecks decided to attack a Russian consulate inside the United States, and Russia decides to respond by sending a bunch of warplanes into US air space and maybe drop a bomb or two onto US soil to stop the attacks all the people advocating these tactics would be screaming for bloody war against Russia.

 Seaward wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

The simple fact is that by the time you can be confident that you're facing an attack and not just a riot it's too late to start bombing everything.

You think there was no point during the seven-hour attack that it became apparent it was an attack and not a riot that got a little overexcited?

Did you also live near a military base, General?

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Seriously, if a bunch of extremist rednecks decided to attack a Russian consulate inside the United States, and Russia decides to respond by sending a bunch of warplanes into US air space and maybe drop a bomb or two onto US soil to stop the attacks all the people advocating these tactics would be screaming for bloody war against Russia.

Sure. But you're missing some key points. We could actually do that to Libya without fear of consequence. The same would not be true with anyone else doing it to us. I'm not suggesting we'd go to war over it or anything - though we might - but that we're a pretty powerful nation you generally don't want to bomb. Libya is not.

International law is pretty irrelevant if the primary enforcers choose to ignore it.

Durandal wrote:
Nate Silver is heavily biasing the polls to forecast an Obama win.

Right now early voting tallies show Obama is behind in Ohio by a larger margin then he won in 2008. Romney is far ahead of McCain's totals for the same time frame.

Given the disaster that Obama's presidency has become, we can only hope that he concedes before he is granted spawndom.

sirlynchmob wrote:

Durandal wrote:
Nate Silver is heavily biasing the polls to forecast an Obama win.

Right now early voting tallies show Obama is behind in Ohio by a larger margin then he won in 2008. Romney is far ahead of McCain's totals for the same time frame.

Given the disaster that Obama's presidency has become, we can only hope that he concedes before he is granted spawndom.

I guess having his son buy large interests in the companies that run the polling machines is paying off for him.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
So 3 hours after the beginning of the attack the rioters actually disperse and then wait for 4 hours until switching to mortar rounds.

Dem flares would really have worked a wonder.

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 EURCOM, 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 can be 100% certain that cross-border authority was never given. How do I know this? Because if CBA was granted and the rescue mission execute orders were handed down, irrefutable records exist today in at least a dozen involved component commands, and probably many more. No general or admiral will risk being hung out to dry for undertaking a mission-gone-wrong that the POTUS later disavows ordering, and instead blames on “loose cannons” or “rogue officers” exceeding their authority. No general or admiral will order U.S. armed forces to cross an international border on a hostile mission unless and until he is certain that the National Command Authority, in the person of the POTUS and his chain of command, has clearly and explicitly given that order: verbally at the outset, but thereafter in written orders and official messages. If they exist, they could be produced today.

When it comes to granting cross-border authority, there are no presidential mumblings or musings to paraphrase or decipher. If you hear confusion over parsed statements given as an excuse for Benghazi, then you are hearing lies. I am sure that hundreds of active-duty military officers know all about the Benghazi execute orders (or the lack thereof), and I am impatiently waiting for one of them to come forward to risk his career and pension as a whistleblower.

Leon Panetta is falling on his sword for President Obama with his absurd-on-its-face, “the U.S. military doesn’t do risky things”-defense of his shameful no-rescue policy. Panetta is utterly destroying his reputation. General Dempsey joins Panetta on the same sword with his tacit agreement by silence. But why? How far does loyalty extend when it comes to covering up gross dereliction of duty by the president?

General Petraeus, however, has indirectly blown the whistle. He was probably “used” in some way early in the cover-up with the purported CIA intel link to the Mohammed video, and now he feels burned. So he conclusively said via his public affairs officer that the stand-down order did not come from the CIA. Well — what outranks the CIA? Only the national security team at the White House. That means President Obama, and nobody else. Petraeus is naming Obama without naming him. If that is not quite as courageous as blowing a whistle, it is far better than the disgraceful behavior of Panetta and Dempsey.

We do not know the facts for certain, but we do know that the rescue mission stand-down issue revolves around the granting or withholding of cross-border authority, which belongs only to President Obama. More than one hundred gung-ho Force Recon Marines were waiting on the tarmac in Sigonella, just two hours away for the launch order that never came.

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.

 Peregrine wrote:

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.

So in right-wing fantasy world when a situation appears to be resolved and the president goes to bed nobody can wake him up? Not even a polite "excuse me sir, but the situation has changed completely and we think you might want to be aware of our latest update"?



And I have yet to see any kind of plausible explanation for WHY Obama would refuse to act. And no, "because of the election" isn't an answer because:

1) Attacks on the US are a unifying force. Why wouldn't Obama look at history and see how Bush benefited from a boost in popularity following 9/11 and turn the attack into his similar "9/11" moment? Why minimize the significance of something that could very easily be turned to his own benefit, and possibly secure his reelection?

2) A dramatic rescue operation makes Obama look good. "Yet again our brave forces have defeated our enemies and saved American lives", and another popularity boost just like the successful attack on Bin Laden. Assuming a rescue operation was in fact ready to go (and not just right-wing fantasy) and all that was needed was Obama's approval, why would he decline to allow it?

When you look at things from the perspective of the "conspiracy" and all of their actions seem completely opposed to what someone would really do in that situation it's time to take off the tinfoil hat.

 whembly wrote:

Hey... dude... I'm with ya...

It's just that this "drip, drip, drip" of information just doesn't line up. I just looks odd.

U.S. Offers New Details Of Deadly Libya Attack

by Tom Bowman
November 02, 2012 4:00 AM

Once a mob began attacking the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11, officials in Washington, D.C., watched with alarm. Now, new details are emerging about their response to the deadly attack.

President Obama and his entire national security team monitored what was going on half a world away. Army Gen. Carter Ham, who was the regional commander for Africa, happened to be in Washington that day.

One source familiar with the events said there was a sense of urgency.

The consulate was burning, and Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was visiting the consulate with a small security team, was missing in the smoky chaos. For the next six hours or more, top officials in Washington watched and tried to send help as a second attack centered on the consulate's annex, a secret CIA base.

Officials say that U.S. forces from Europe and Fort Bragg in North Carolina were dispatched in an effort to help, but they arrived too late. Officials considered sending U.S. warplanes from Italy, but it was decided that dropping bombs would lead to civilian casualties.

Officials dispute a report on Fox News that there was a delay, a "stand down" for CIA operatives and Libyan guards to help those under fire at the consulate.

Could The U.S. Military Come To Their Aid?

The officials had little time to respond. There were no U.S. troops anywhere near the consulate, either in Libya or even in neighboring countries. So dozens of special operations forces and CIA guards from Tripoli were sent by aircraft to Benghazi, 480 miles to the east. They could not get there in time to help defend the consulate.

Ham, back in Washington, requested a military counterterrorism force from Europe. But they arrived in Libya the day after the attack and deployed to Tunisia two days later. A larger special operations force was sent from Fort Bragg, complete with their own helicopters and trucks. They arrived in Sigonella, Italy, too late to be any help. No American forces were denied by Washington, officials say.

American attack aircraft? An AC-130 gunship would seem to make sense. That's the lumbering black cargo plane, a flying battleship with three types of heavy guns and high-resolution cameras. It's often used to support special operations forces in tight urban areas and can zoom in on enemy forces. But there were no Spectre gunships in the area, officials learned.

Attack helicopters? None around. There were two Navy ships in the Mediterranean — the USS Laboon and the USS McFaul — but only the Laboon is equipped with a Seahawk helicopter, the Navy's version of the Black Hawk.

There were American warplanes based in Aviano, Italy, just across the Mediterranean, but they could not arrive in time to help with the consulate fight. When the attack began, consulate officials made an urgent call to the CIA guards at the nearby annex: We're under attack.

Was The Rescue Delayed?

The CIA official there organized his force and the Libyan guards at the annex. Some tried to find heavy machine guns to bring along to the consulate, about a mile away. One of the CIA operatives waiting to leave grew increasingly angry, convinced they were being told to "stand down" on two occasions, according to a report on Fox News.

CIA officials in Washington strongly deny there was any order not to mount a rescue mission. And the source tells NPR there was never an order to stay put. It was all about getting ready, not delaying. Within 24 minutes, the American and Libyan team moved out toward the consulate.

The convoy drove along an indirect route to avoid hostile militias, and the Americans and Libyans hustled along on foot for the last half mile, arriving an hour after the call for help.

The source said that surveillance cameras establish what time they left the annex and what time they showed up at the consulate. When they arrived, Ambassador Stevens was missing. He was carried to a hospital by looters, and later died there of asphyxiation from the smoke he inhaled while in the consulate's safe room.

The American and Libyan team loaded up the wounded and the survivors, and made their way back to the annex. They got lost in the maze of streets, and some militia members shot at their tires as they made it back to the annex. In Washington, there was relief. At the White House and the Pentagon, top officials believed the worst was over after the successful rescue mission.

The Second Attack

For several hours, there was a lull in the fighting. Then a second attack began, at the well-fortified annex. In Washington, the issue of attack aircraft came up among top officials.

The F-16 Fighting Falcons could come to the rescue from their base in Aviano, some officials thought. But there were no clear targets, it was decided. An unarmed Predator drone flew over the area, just before the consulate attack ended. But it offered only a "soda straw" view hundreds of feet below near the annex. There were no armed drones in the area.

Officials watched the grainy footage from the drone. It was hard to determine, among the hundreds of people, who was with a militia supporting the U.S., who was taking part in that second attack, and who was a spectator — people, as the source said, "watching a war movie in front of them." Sporadic gunfire added to the confusion about separating friend from foe.

Officials eventually decided they couldn't drop large bombs in a residential neighborhood.

A decision was made: no close air support, not even as a show of force that could possibly disperse the fighters. The Americans, and their Libyan allies fighting with them on the ground, were on their own.

At some point, the Quick Reaction Force arrived from Tripoli to help. Rocket-propelled grenades and mortars slammed into the annex. One mortar curled into the base and killed two Americans. The annex was never breached, and the attackers were fought off. The force from Tripoli helped move the survivors to the airport.

There was frustration in Washington that no more American firepower could be brought to help, according to the source. No more troops. No aircraft at all. If the Quick Reaction Force from Tripoli had not been able to fight off the attackers and evacuate the annex, there would have been even more casualties and perhaps more pressure to send in some type of additional American force.

In the end, four Americans were killed: Ambassador Stevens; Sean Smith, a U.S. Foreign Service officer; and two embassy security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Another 30 Americans and Libyans were wounded.

Obama and some of the same senior officials who huddled in Washington and tried to send them help assembled at Andrews Air Force Base three nights later to meet the four caskets.

 Peregrine wrote:
So your entire position on the issue comes down to "might makes right"?

 Seaward wrote:

My Benghazi complaint has always been the aftermath.

 Seaward wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
So your entire position on the issue comes down to "might makes right"?

No, more that right is irrelevant without might.

I'm not out for blood over the situation on the ground and who made what call, for the record. From what I've seen, the CIA got their gak together fairly quickly and tried to take care of business. I doubt air strikes would have been practical, and it'd take a while to get on the ground in Benghazi from Djibouti, though it theoretically could have been possible.

My Benghazi complaint has always been the aftermath.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

My Benghazi complaint has always been the aftermath.

Genuine question incoming : What aftermath? The lack of sanctions?

 Seaward wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

My Benghazi complaint has always been the aftermath.

Genuine question incoming : What aftermath? The lack of sanctions?

No, the week plus of telling us it was all a protest gone wrong, stemming from the YouTube movie.

Maddermax wrote:
The truth is far more likely that he was given mixed intel, didn't make a gut decision on no evidence (Which he could have, and he could have played it up for political points), but left declarative statements until more info was gathered. It makes no damned sense that he'd do it just for kicks.

 d-usa wrote:

People who claim that tactics used in active war zones such as flying F-16's around dropping flares and then bombs on insurgents are perfectly viable options for violating the international borders of a sovereign country.

 Seaward wrote:

Maddermax wrote:
The truth is far more likely that he was given mixed intel, didn't make a gut decision on no evidence (Which he could have, and he could have played it up for political points), but left declarative statements until more info was gathered. It makes no damned sense that he'd do it just for kicks.

The problem there is that there were plenty of declarative statements made by the administration, they were simply false - and demonstrably false at the time they were made.

According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”