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Breaking News: Military at fault for Benghazi

Faster horses

Well-known member
WASHINGTON (AP) — A report by the House Benghazi panel is faulting the military for its slow response sending resources to Benghazi, Libya, during deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. outpost, despite clear orders from President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Republicans on the Benghazi committee released an 800-page report on Tuesday on the attacks that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina said “nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed almost eight hours after the attacks began.”

Gowdy said the Libyan forces that evacuated Americans from the CIA annex in Benghazi were not affiliated with any of the militias the CIA or State Department had developed a relationship with during the previous 18 months.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee faulted the Obama administration Tuesday for what they said was a slowed response to help Americans under attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, died in two assaults at the diplomatic facility and CIA annex.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said the panel’s report, being released Tuesday, was not aimed at Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time. Democrats have said the goal of the report is to undermine Clinton’s presidential bid.

Gowdy said Tuesday that the report documents that the U.S. was slow to send help to the Americans in Benghazi “because of an obsession with hurting the Libyans’ feelings.”

He said the report was not aimed at Clinton, but portrays “series of heroic acts” by Americans under attack “and what we can do to prevent” other assaults.

The Libya attacks became immediate political fodder, given their timing in the weeks before President Barack Obama’s re-election, and that has not abated despite seven previous congressional investigations. There has been finger-pointing on both sides over security at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi and whether the White House initially tried to portray the assault as a protest over an offensive, anti-Muslim video, instead of a calculated terrorist attack.

Democrats released a report Monday saying that while the State Department’s security measures in Benghazi the night of Sept. 11, 2012, were “woefully inadequate,” Clinton never personally turned down a request for additional security. Democrats said the military could not have done anything differently that night to save the lives of the Americans.


On Tuesday, the panel’s Democrats denounced the Republicans’ report as “a conspiracy theory on steroids — bringing back long-debunked allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever.” The statement added: “Republicans promised a process and report that was fair and bipartisan, but this is exactly the opposite.”

The State Department also issued a statement Tuesday, saying that the “essential facts” of the attacks “have been known for some time,” and have been the subject of numerous reviews, including one by an independent review board.

Spokesman Mark Toner said the department had implemented most of the recommendations of the independent review board and wais continuing to expand security at its facilities and improve its threat assessment.

“We have made great progress toward making our posts safer since 2012,” Toner said in a statement. “Our priority continues to be carrying out our national security mission while mitigating the risks to our employees.”

Toner said the department cooperated extensively with the House panel, providing more than 50 current and former employees for interviews and over 100,000 pages of documents.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who helped write the Republican report, told CNN that “too little effort was made to protect” Stevens and the others. “We didn’t move Heaven and Earth to get help to the people who were fighting for their lives,” he said.
 

loomixguy

Well-known member
There were US assets available that could have had boots on the ground, or made strafing runs until morning in Benghazi. 2 hours or less. Who gave the order to "stand down"?

Just like the upcoming election, Benghazi was rigged. I don't care what the report says.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Hard for me to believe Trey Gowdy settled for this. Or was he threatened? Will we ever know.
Disappointing.
Can't you hear Hillary now?
Gives a whole new meaning to "what difference does it make?" When she said that, I now think she knew what the outcome
of the investigation would be. We thought she meant something else.



Looks like the Clintons always win. And they say
crime doesn't pay? :???: Well, they used to say that.
 

Steve

Well-known member
loomixguy said:
There were US assets available that could have had boots on the ground, or made strafing runs until morning in Benghazi. 2 hours or less. Who gave the order to "stand down"?

Just like the upcoming election, Benghazi was rigged. I don't care what the report says.

Maybe something has changed,. but in my military experience, can't do it wasn't an acceptable answer..

That and leadership demanding follow-ups on progress.. must be the new norm..

I find it appalling that not one asset was deployed. yet they had time to send TWO unarmed drones?

and a former seal was not only able to get his team there but did so without the help of the US or Libyan government.

This wasn't just a military failure,. it was a total failure of the leadership..



Now the question that still needs to be answered is "Why didn't they deploy anything? "
 

Steve

Well-known member
on the don't blame the Military so fast NOTE:
NEW EMAIL shows Pentagon ASKED Hillary to LET THEM send help to Benghazi, proving Leon Panetta LIED!!

An email recently obtained by Judicial Watch shows that the Pentagon was demanding Hillary allow them to send help to Benghazi during the 2012 attack. This would completely contradict the claim from Hillary and Leon Panetta that no forces were available and within reach to provide help to the compound that was under siege.

Link to email: http://therightscoop.com/new-email-shows-pentagon-asked-hillary-to-let-them-send-help-to-benghazi-proving-leon-panetta-lied/

the email states:
From: Bash, Jeremy CIV SD [REDACTED]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 7:19 PM
To: Sullivan, Jacob J; Sherman, Wendy R; Nides, Thomas R
Cc: Miller, James HON OSD POLICY; Wienefeld, James A ADM JSC VCJCS; Kelly, John LtGen SD; martin, dempsey [REDACTED]
Subject: Libya

State colleagues:

I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton].

After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi, They are spinning up as we speak. They include a [redacted]

Assuming Principles agree to deploy these elements, we will ask state to secure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us. [redacted]
Jeremy
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-benghazi-email-shows-dod-offered-state-department-forces-that-could-move-to-benghazi-immediately-specifics-blacked-out-in-new-document/
 

Steve

Well-known member
Tray Gowdy said everyone will read this report differently, depending on their biases.. seems like blaming the military is one of those media biases we are so used to..

All evidence now points to a specific stand-down order issued by Secretary Clinton, since the Libyan facilities came under her direct authority. Without a specific request for assistance from the State Department, the Pentagon was powerless to act.

Last month, the State Department released a critical email, sent at 7:09 pm Washington time (1:09 am Benghazi time) from Jeremy Bash, a top aide to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, informing Mrs. Clinton’s office of various military assets that were “spinning up as we speak” to deploy to Benghazi.

Among those assets were C-110 in Croatia, two U.S. Marine Corps Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoons based in Rota, Spain, the Spectre gunships, armed Predator drones, and possibly elements of Marine Expeditionary Units in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

In preparation for deploying C-110 directly to Benghazi from Croatia, General Carter Ham, commander-in-chief of Africa Command (AFRICOM), issued orders transferring authority for C-110 to him from European Command (EUCOM).

General Ham was doing what any smart U.S. military officer would have done, by laying the ground work for a formal order he expected to come down an hour or two later.

“Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to secure the approval from host nation,” Bash wrote. “Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us.”

that approval never came..
To date, the State Department has not released any reply from Mrs. Clinton’s office to Bash’s 7:09 PM request.

maybe she was to busy getting the false talking points together.. :mad:


edited to add link http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261442/hillarys-benghazi-stand-down-order-exposed-kenneth-r-timmerman
 

Steve

Well-known member
According to the report issued by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered U.S. forces to deploy sometime between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. ET, about three hours after the attack began at 3:42 p.m. ET.

The report asserts that Panetta believed his orders were clear, and they were to "deploy the identified assets immediately," not "order the preparation to deploy or the planning to deploy or the contemplation of deployment."

"Yet nearly two more hours elapsed before the Secretary’s orders were relayed to those forces. Several more hours elapsed before any of those forces moved," said the report.

The report asserts that during that time the White House held a two-hour interagency meeting to discuss the deployment of forces and exchange information.

During that meeting, officials discussed details such as whether deployed Marines should wear their uniforms or civilian attire to avoid the appearance of an invading force.

yep she was to busy covering her --- ---
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Hannity is going to have a large part of his program on this tonight.

I got my original post from Yahoo News. Of course they are biased. Seriously.
 

loomixguy

Well-known member
FWIW, my phone rang the other night and it was an old friend. We've known each other for close to 25 years. I still don't know what he actually does for a living, but I've a pretty fair idea. I do know he's former Navy Intelligence. These days, now you see him, now you don't. For months at a time. When he does appear, he's absolutely flush with cash. His passport looks like a preacher's dog eared copy of the Bible. His home is a reinforced bunker, and in his house, weapons are all over the place. He's always carrying one and a back up. He speaks of the world's most troubled areas with an intimate knowledge of the why's and who's.

We were discussing "13 Hours", and he asked me if I knew that Sean Smith and Ambassador Chris Stevens were gay. He knew and had worked with both of them. I asked him why would they send folks like that to a station in a Muslim country, where the Muslims routinely kill homosexuals. That doesn't seem incredibly smart. His response was that a large majority of the US Ambassadors stationed in Muslim countries ARE homosexuals. Orders from the very top, meaning Valerie Jarrett.

It seems like the administration is doing everything it can to create international incidents. In Benghazi, they succeeded. I don't give a flying fig about their sexual orientation....they deserved to be protected. They were Americans and deserved a helluva lot better than they got.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Stevens had already been stationed in Libya twice. The Muslim people there liked him a lot and some even claim Stevens was a Sufi Muslim convert. He was the most knowledgeable State dept employee on Libya and was there because of his knowledge of the people and the country, not his sexual orientation or Valerie Jarrett. lol.
 

loomixguy

Well-known member
My buddy who had worked with him said he was queer, not unqualified to be there, 2.0. The Hadji's who killed him must not have gotten the memo about how well liked he and knowledgeable he was about Libya, or that he may have converted....but why would a person who's a homosexual convert to a religion where being a homosexual means death? That doesn't pass the smell test.

Still seems odd they send them where the local religion dictates they should be killed.
 

Mike

Well-known member
by Joseph Earnest October 30, 2012

Newscast Media WASHINGTON, D.C—The Benghazi murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens refuses to go away. The more the administration evades questions on the subject, the more people hypothesize what took place and why it happened. There are several theories floating around as to why Chris Stevens was killed. All theories will be explored in a three-part series, including an analysis by this writer.

The controversy stems from the untimely death of Chris Stevens who was stationed in Libya. How, we should ask, did Chris Stevens end up in Benghazi?
It all started when Stevens attended Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meeting in Paris on Monday night March 14, 2011 with representatives of the Libyan opposition, as did U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz, who has also had contacts with the opposition. Stevens was thereafter assigned to Benghazi by Hillary Clinton as reported by ABC News.

Christopher Steven had also converted to Islam and was a Sufi Muslim, something the media neglects to report. He therefore felt comfortable accepting the job in a predominantly Muslim country like Libya. Now that we have established how Stevens ended up in Libya, the next question we should ask is, "What went wrong?"
 

Mike

Well-known member
It was on the news the very next day after the fiasco that Stevens was gay. That's no revelation.

Washington Post By Kevin Sullivan September 14, 2012
Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens spent several hours at an outdoor cafe in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, on July 3. He was being interviewed for Libyan television, but local people kept coming up in the broiling summer heat wanting to meet him.

“We spent almost three hours just standing there, with people taking pictures with him,” said Heba Alshibani, the interviewer. “People loved him. He would never say no. Even if he was in a hurry, if someone said, ‘Can I take a picture?’ ‘Can I talk to you?’ he would stand there and talk.”

Stevens, who was killed Tuesday in an armed assault by extremists on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, was a beloved figure in the country, said Alshibani, who is in the United States on a three-week exchange program for media professionals sponsored by the State Department.

“Libya lost a great man, an amazing ally,” Alshibani, 25, said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “He was the one who believed in us when others didn’t.”

Alshibani said Stevens promoted U.S.-Libyan relations by making himself accessible to ordinary Libyans. She said that he traveled with very light security and that he liked to walk around Tripoli with just a couple of armed guards who stayed far in the background.

People were well aware, Alshibani said, that Stevens had arrived in Benghazi on a Greek cargo ship last year, at great personal risk during a raging civil war, to show support for rebel forces who eventually overthrew longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

She blamed the attack that killed Stevens on “a small group of extremists” who don’t represent the majority of Libyans. She said that most people want good relations with the United States and that Stevens was an extremely popular face of America.

On the day he was killed, she said, several Libyans entered the burning consulate and carried a gravely injured Stevens to a hospital. “They risked their lives,” she said. “This should give you an indication of how much he was loved in Libya.”

Alshibani and her colleagues had been scheduled to meet with Stevens next week in Tripoli to recap their trip. “He was a genuine man,” she said. “The first thing you got from him was this bright, big smile — not like so many of the other diplomats, who have this fake smile. His was so warm and real.”

Alshibani was in Reno, Nev., when she heard that Stevens had been killed. She said that she was initially worried Americans would react badly to her and her six colleagues because they were Libyans. But she quickly realized that just as most Libyans were upset about the attack on Stevens, most Americans were disgusted at the anti-Muslim film made by a few extremists in California that sparked anti-American riots across the Muslim world.

She said some Americans told her they were surprised about the attack in Benghazi, which had been a rebel stronghold during the anti-Gaddafi uprisings. She said the Americans said: “It’s a city we helped against a tyrant. It’s a people we helped against annihilation, and this happened to us.”

But she said that she and her colleagues have received calls and e-mails from Americans they met in Washington, New York, Reno and Los Angeles, saying that “they don’t think any less of us.”

“That was so warming, you have no idea,” she said.

Alshibani and her six colleagues — who work in television, radio, newspapers and public relations — are among those trying to build a more open and independent media environment in Libya after more than 40 years of strict state control under Gaddafi.t
 

Steve

Well-known member
from the above clip...
Adam Housley: When we talk about those with reactions I spoke with including one special agent who was on the ground that night who says to me in Benghazi, quote, ” the report continues to show how ridiculous the STate Department makes it to give support to a special agent on the ground when he says he needs support. There were about 10 of us who continually asked for more weapons and more security in Benghazi and were routinely denied.” And we reported on that because the State Department told him it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing to have a belt-fed machine gun, for example.

what is not aesthetically pleasing is dead, maimed bodies and burned out consulates..

When will liberals realize that if you project weakness in a war torn country you are soon a target?
 

Traveler

Well-known member
Steve said:
from the above clip...
Adam Housley: When we talk about those with reactions I spoke with including one special agent who was on the ground that night who says to me in Benghazi, quote, ” the report continues to show how ridiculous the STate Department makes it to give support to a special agent on the ground when he says he needs support. There were about 10 of us who continually asked for more weapons and more security in Benghazi and were routinely denied.” And we reported on that because the State Department told him it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing to have a belt-fed machine gun, for example.

what is not aesthetically pleasing is dead, maimed bodies and burned out consulates..

When will liberals realize that if you project weakness in a war torn country you are soon a target?
The only example I can think of is the reported gays buying guns to defend themselves against Muslims.
 

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