The topic is Benghazi.
So, ladies and gentlemen, what have we "learned" in the past few days about the performance of our Comander-in-Chief and his "brilliant" Secretary of State during the slow-motion Benghazi massacre?
Hmmmm . . . so much . . . so much . . . . Panetta's testimony Hill testmony earlier this week and that of General Dempsey make it clear that neither Obama nor Clinton were either deeply concerned about or involved in the Benghazi crisis. You can read all about it on the net--I am having trouble setting up links (sorry). Despite their subsequent teary statements about how deeply they felt the tragic deaths of Stevens et al in Benghazi, neither of our fearless leaders could really be bothered too much to have worked to avoid the massacre or to have worked to stop the assault once it began.
Let's see hands: How many of you are surprised to hear this?
I thought you might find the link (below) to be relevant. . .
ReplyDeleteWhat does it mean to take responsibility, to Sec. Clinton? It isn't "being at fault," certainly. And it wouldn't do to look too closely at what went wrong before getting to the part where others can be assured that it won't happen again, as you can obviously only move forward if you put loose ends behind you. . .
Taking responsibility should mean confessing what went wrong, facing personal consequences for failures that have affected others, determining to the best of your ability what ought to have been done instead and--if you haven't been fired, during the part where "facing personal consequences" should have happened--making preparations or modifying policy to avoid previous mistakes, wrongdoing, intelligence failures, whatever.
That's my opinion.
See http://youtu.be/y3xUCSGYAwo .
Is it remotely possible one or the other - or both - may have been "indisposed" and thus unable to make serious decisions that held consequences, and so were kept from answering by staff? Nah, probably not.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they were "choomed"?
DeleteThe revelations were stupendous! And yet they fell nowhere. From a General who declared the military should not be used as a 911 response system, to tangle-tongued Panetta having the cover stripped from Hillary and Obama's indifference, it should have caused major reverberations throughout the nation.
ReplyDeleteFor if the President cannot be reached or takes a hands off approach, the entire country is at risk.
Will he sit silently if your city has a missile launched at it?
Disgusting and sorry to let brave Americans die while he dined and slept. And the General is a disgrace.
ETR
DeletePraying for your sons who are still in the military. I know from prior posts elsewhere that you are a proud multigeneration military family. Having said that, I am sad to say that at the moment I wouldn't recommend military service, border patrol, foreign service for much of anyone these days. Seems to me an awful lot of good people are being left hanging in the wind by this administration and being harmed by this administration. Blessings and prayers for you an yours.
Obama's answer is the proof of his guilt, and it gives us a clue as to the doctrine informing his decision to do nothing. The most damaging part of Obama's evasive answer is this:
ReplyDelete... the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. ... I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number-one priority making sure that people were safe.
This is the blatant lie that condemns the liar. The president says here that immediately, "the minute I found out what was happening," he gave the order to the military, the CIA, to everyone, to secure our personnel in Benghazi and do "whatever we need to."
Yet the undeniable fact is that nothing was done. We know that the CIA security agent in Benghazi, Tyrone Woods, asked for permission to rescue Ambassador Stevens when Stevens was still alive and in the safe room. Woods was told twice by the CIA to stand down. He then disobeyed direct orders and rescued the survivors at the consulate, but it was too late for Stevens and Sean Smith.
Secretary of Defense Panetta tells us the military had gunships and Special Forces less than two hours away in Sicily but felt it was too "risky" to send in reinforcements or air cover. It would have been normal military procedure to pre-position air cover and assets from Sicily to Benghazi, but Panetta says this was not done. The air support and FAST platoons, we are told, were left in Sicily. All the U.S. military did was send two unarmed drones to observe the battle.
So if President Obama is not lying about his directives, he is saying that the CIA and the Defense Department and our military chain of command disobeyed the direct order of our commander in chief to do everything in their power to rescue our people under attack in Benghazi. And that as commander in chief, Obama did nothing in response to their dereliction of duty.
That doesn't happen. No one believes that; the president is lying. He did not issue directives to the CIA, our military, and State to "secure our personnel" and "do whatever we need to do."
One has to wonder, in this amazing web of conflicting lies, if determined CIA security agent Tyrone Woods was either admonished or even punished for his amazingly brave act of disobeying direct orders?
DeleteI mean, after all, he ended up with survivors!
That's more than can be said for the rest of this abysmal cast of characters.
We will see more of this sorry scenario in the next few years!
Sandra C.
Where are the survivors? Why has none of them spoken out about Benghazi? Are they being held somewhere? Have they been threatened if they decide to speak out? An appalling lack of curiosity on the part of the media and the Congress.
DeleteYes makes one wonder doesn't it.
DeleteAFRICOM was ordered to stand down right? Who gave that order? Unless U.S. military and diplomatic commands routinely follow unsigned and unauthenticated orders there must be a signature or paper trail.
DeleteWhy isn't it being followed up on?
I think the whole congressional hearings are just theatre to appear like something is happening.
Diplomad, I have been waiting for you to comment on the dispicable display of lies, obfuscations, diversions, deceit and deception that was the testimony of Leon Panetta and General Dempsey. But to have a true picture of the absolute disgrace that Benghazi represents, one cannot just look at the testimony of those two political animals who were there simply to a)make a political statement (sequestration) b) create excuses for their total lack of response to the attack being perpetrated on Americans on American soil and c) creating a senario of "plausible deniability" for the CIC.
ReplyDeleteYou have to examine the testimony of Charlene Lamb, who funtioned directly under Hillary Clinton. In her testimony, not her prepared statement, Lamb testified that she, et al, was aware of the events occuring in the ongoing attack as she could monitor the attack "in 'near' real time." This 'near' real time monitoring including videos from the unarmed drones to the communications between Ty Woods and Glen Dorhety. Basically, State was able to listen in, and watch from drone video, exactly what was happening. Yet, Panetta testified that our government was unable to know what exactly what was happening on the ground during the attacks that lasted almost 8 hours.
For Panetta to testify that there was no available aid that could have been sent to Benghazi in time, as Lindsay Graham pointed out, is just not creditible. We had forces, and air support, both at Sigonella and at Souda Bay, Crete, both capable of being over Benghazi in less than two hours. Such deployments might not have saved the lives of Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith, but most certainly would have lended aid to Ty Woods and Glen Dohrety, who were slaughtered after a fire fight that lasted almost 8 hours. Remember, the FAST teams are designed, and train for, just such a senario. They were not deployed until AFTER the attack was completely over.
So because no one in this current administration is willing to honestly tell the American people of such deriliction of duty as exhibited during the Benghazi attack, even more questions surface.
We are told, by Panetta, that it was he who informed Obama of the ongoing attack at a prescheduled meeting at 5:00 p.m. D.C. time, over an hour after the attack began at 9:40 p.m. Benghazi time. We know from Panetta's testimony that he spoke with the President for roughly 1/2 hour and most of that conversation dealt with the American embassy in Cairo, not Benghazi which was under attack. We know that at no time, during the rest of the attack, did Panetta, or Dempsey, speak with either Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Where was Hillary during all that time? Seems, no one knows, or no one is willing to say. But we do know that during that time, Obama's staff facilitated a phone call to Benjamin Netanyahu, for a conversation between to the state leaders that lasted for slightly over an hour. You see, Obama was catching flack (from the liberal Jewish voting bloc) for his refusal to meet with Netanyahu in the forthcoming weeks and had to tamp down that criticism being all presidental with a phone call. It has been reported that Obama then retired to his private quarters at approx. 9:00 p.m. D.C. time, five hours after the Benghazi attack started and three hours before it was over.
That 3:00 a.m. call came, only at 4:00 p.m. And no one, not Obama, not Hillary, not Panetta, not Dempsey, no one did one damn thing to save our FSOs in Benghazi. Our nation demanded accountability from a President who oversaw a simply policial breakin, yet our press seems reluctant to hold this administration accountable for the deaths of four Americans. According the NYSlimes, and their ilk, "Nothing to see here. Let's just move on to something that doesn't hurt this administration or make it look bad. How about styrofoam cups in New York?"
My heart is breaking.
Zane
I can understand your sadness and hurt, but you have to remember that 50% of Americans have voted for this twice now and may do so yet agin for a third.
DeleteAll the information on the clintons and Obama is out there available for them to read just like I have.
MikeNZ
Too true. When Hillary lawyered up immediately after, we saw all we needed to see, and the MSMs complicity was the confirmation.
DeleteThe fix was in at the NYT and WAPO and MSNBC, top-down, to keep it quiet, while the sheeple snooze on, happy to get their's: Obamaphones, food stamps, and welfare forever, along with more union govt jobs in DC, Chicago and Atlanta, with HARP loan forgiveness for the suburban PTA mommies.
Except for the fact that the NYTimes, WashPost, TV networks and news magazines have ignored, and continue to ignore this colossal error, the facts seem to be coming out -- as our host predicted long ago. The second part of his prediction was that professionals in the State Department would not allow themselves to be made scapegoats to the lies their superiors told and continue to tell. I look forward to that prediction coming true also. This administration has now told so many lies I am guessing the MSM will have a hard time continuing to cover for them. That shows how naive I am. But seriously, when enough sitting Senators, Representatives, Executive Branch secretaries, deputy secretaries, and deputy assistant secretaries have been lied to and about, Obama might just reach a critical mass. I am holding out for this -- the moment when enough people have been sacrificed that they begin to say "screw this." When that preference cascade starts there will be no stopping it and even the MSM might join in. Bring on the popcorn!
ReplyDeleteF, if you are waiting for the lies, deciet, deception and diversions to reach critical mass so that the lapdog media will finally report on it, I fear you have a long wait.
DeleteYou have to understand that the media, save a few exceptions, is made up of far left wingers. Pinch Sultzberger of the NYSlimes is an admitted Fabian Socialist. Obama is their dream guy, someone who will finally implement those Socialist utopian policies that they have longed for since they were taught by radical journalism professors in tony universities. Professors like Robert Jensen of the University of Texas/Austin. Remember, there is not one of them that does not idealize those like Walter Lippman and Walter Cronkite.
Zane
Diplomad- please continue- you have many more readers than "5 or 6" as the number of posters itself proves, and thats just those who take the time to reply- I am sure there are a great many lurkers, some of whom are praying for and cheering you on for your courage, to continue.
DeleteIts objectively true that the majority of the "MSM" have allowed themselves to believe that its good and moral for them to distort the truth in service to "something"-
Starting with their instructors- the failed hippies of the sixties, they learned transnationalism, post-modernism, the "truth" of the narrative being more important than objective fact, or morality.
And that was reflected in movies like The Year of Living Dangerously, or Salvador- the Oliver Stone slant on why its ok to "abandon truth for the greater good".
Change wont come from the narcissistic boomers until another decade of navel gazing, and remorse in search of salvation, for their errors.
Instead it will come from the next generation, thats very aware of the costs of the moral mistakes- the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the children of those who died at the Twin Towers.
They are reading your words, Diplomad. The read the blogs, and proof is the growing success of those like PJ Media. (if you ever get tired of Blogger, call them for advice, or talk to "Gates of Vienna")
Dont ever despair, or under-estimate the power of speaking the truth.
And remember that not all journalists are corrupt cowards- I wonder what you think of this- worth the watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9BD7CYLTndk#!
But this is not a lap-dog media. This is "union" media. We are talking about a cabal of union journalists in television and print who owe their livelihood to the unions that allows them to work where they do. Union cops, union federal workers, union teachers, it goes on and on.
DeleteAnd the unions want Obama in power; and these unions have been rather transparent and self-admitting to their transnational and anti-Constitutional agendas, if only to subordinate the rights of an American citizen to involuntary union conscription and membership as a singular test of employability.
The union IS the problem in media reportage. If they lose union standing they lose their career and cannot work for the employers they now have.
Case in point (to my previous post): the NYTimes editorial today calling on Senator Menendez to relinquish his chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee -- at least until he can clear his name over the money Dr. Melgen paid to a Democrat Super Pac and half a million dollars of which went to Menendez' reelection campaign. And the Times didn't even mention the fact that all the schools Melgen has put on his resume deny he was ever a student there. The lies are beginning to come home to roost. I hope.
ReplyDeleteF: I'm with you. Of course the analogy is the juggler. Maybe he's adept at keeping 3 or 4 objects(lies) aloft, but whether he likes it or not more and more objects are forced upon him. Eventually not one, but all will fall. I am surprised how long they've kept it up though. What's telling is they have to keep telling more and more lies. I know it's not apparent, but they ARE losing.
DeleteObama slept, parents wept ...
ReplyDeleteMen died
DeleteObama lied
Hillary cried
And the Media sighed...then moved on
DeleteHillary cried,
Deletethen lied,
then alibi-ed.
The she got indignified,
Took a Copt for a railroad ride.
Where is the dissent? How come not a single Ambassador has resigned over this? Sit in any Embassy cafeteria and you will hear FSOs singing this man's praises or shouting hosanna over his re-election, when it should be clearer to State Department insiders than anyone else that he is a fraud. Has no one in Consular Affairs seen his real passport application? Didn't anyone in Mexico City complain about gun running that resulted in the death of host nation police and civilians? Where is AFSA on the woefully inadequate security in Benghazi or the phony-baloney diplomatic status of the facility there? How about a State Mag profile on the surviving DS agents? Are they PNG from the rest of their colleagues now? Have DS agents received a "lessons learned" video presentation on the attacks? What does Gene Cretz have to say about all this? Screw it...just tax the rich some more and everything will be fine.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if my post went through...
ReplyDeleteworth reading:
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/75512/obama-not-talking-turkey-on-arming-syrian-rebels/
in which Brown explains that yes, Obama didn’t want to arm Syrian rebels… on the books, so he told Leon, Martin, Hillary, and David (wink-wink) not to do so. But he armed them off the books, and let David and John take care of the whole thing.
Obama was unavailble, because he and Hillary were getting "busy" in the Lincoln Bedroom.
ReplyDelete-Blake
And I just ate ...
ReplyDeleteStill waiting on CBA to be specifically addressed. As I understand it, the CBA request from AFRICOM (formal POTUS authority to cross the Libyan border under emergency interdiction FAST response SOP "Cross-border Authority) would be automatically begun per standing policy upon AFRICOM discovery of the attack; that FAST forces to rescue the ambassador rolled in lieu of CBA. Interesting though that Panetta just testified General Ham was in DC that night with him. That is new to me. It was my understanding General Ham was relieved of command during the crisis.
ReplyDeleteWho then was on station at AFRICOM as operating commander that night? More mystery surrounds this matter than ever. Who issued the CBA request? Or was it silenced to preclude the need for the POTUS to deny it? Or were normal FAST response and CBA procedures followed and CBA denied by fiat of presidential neglect or overt denial of the POTUS?
This listener interpreted Panetta's recent testimony to confirm the WH had not disclosed the occurrence of the highly sensitive secret meeting between the Obama's personal envoy, Ambassador Christopher Stephens and the Turkish presidential envoy in Benghazi that night. The President of Turkey sends his personal envoy at the invitation of the POTUS to meet with his personal representative and the White House does not inform DoS or DoD to provide the necessary security and contingencies for interdiction and rescue?
This was obviously an ultra-top secret White House operation. If the latest testimony is to be believed, neither State or Defense were apparently informed; nor was AFRICOM. They were kept entirely blind. When the SHTF, DoD and AFRICOM were completely blindsided. When they followed SOP in response to discovering the military emergency of the Ambassador, they found themselves stymied and denied at every turn.
Why?
We must note how POTUS conspicuously ceased to be available that special night of 9/11 after learning the full prior knowledge of known knowns unfolding in Benghazi.
Who was the proxy commander in chief in the White House calling the shots that shut down FAST and stonewalled CBA?
I downloaded this book last night and then promptly stayed up all night reading it.
ReplyDeletehttp://sofrep.com/17087/benghazi-report-jack-murphy-brandon-webb-sofrep/
I hope some of you others will read this and share your thoughts here. Apparently barry was out of the loop on Benghazi, because he was kept out of the loop. Really this should come as no surprise, because barry is not very bright. Brennan is the one to watch.
sb
My understanding was AFRICOM has no resources assigned to it yet, certainly no FAST teams. They are just now getting resources. But who knows? Because there is so little official information and that which we have is largely a pack of lies, which sources do we trust? Certainly not the MSM or the WH or State or DOD or CIA. Or the MSM.
ReplyDeleteI do trust the special operations men who formerly had been boots on the ground in the war on terror. The sofrep ebook is good, but of course, tells the story from the perspective of those who could have been there. Congress refuses to do its duty and actually ask hard and coordinated questions of the Washington officials who were or should have been involved.
My personal opinion: Obama had to get to bed early, since he had to catch a flight to Vegas for a fund raiser the next day. That was his priority. So little time, so much money to collect.
I'm curious;I'm Navy. At what point did you know these people were lying?
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking 15 minutes before they opened their mouths.
But I'll settle for the point where Panetta said something about a general rule about not sending people into harm's way unless you know what's going on.
Umm k. You send people into harm's way to find out what's going on. And we had two SEALs at the objective. If anyone knows anyone who's better at recon than a couple of SEALs, I'm all ears.
Anyway, that's when I could prove it to the doubters.
Also what do you DoS types call an OPREP. Intel failure my kiester.