Posted by Tina
You can read the transcript and see the video here. One of the more disturbing exchanges:
We have learned there were two Delta Force operators who fought at the Annex and they’ve since been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross — two of the military’s highest honors. The Americans who rushed to help that night went without asking for permission and the lingering question is why no larger military response ever crossed the border into Libya — something Greg Hicks realized wasn’t going to happen just an hour into the attack.
Lara Logan: You have this conversation with the defense attache. You ask him what military assets are on their way. And he says–
Greg Hicks: Effectively, they’re not. And I– for a moment, I just felt lost. I just couldn’t believe the answer. And then I made the call to the Annex chief, and I told him, “Listen, you’ve gotta tell those guys there may not be any help coming.”
Lara Logan: That’s a tough thing to understand. Why?
Greg Hicks: It just is. We–, for us, for the people that go out onto the edge, to represent our country, we believe that if we get in trouble, they’re coming to get us. That our back is covered. To hear that it’s not, it’s a terrible, terrible experience.
The U.S. government today acknowledges the Americans at the U.S. compound in Benghazi were not adequately protected. And says those who carried out the attack are still being hunted down.
Just a few weeks ago, Abu Anas al-Libi was captured for his role in the Africa bombings and the U.S. is still investigating what part he may have played in Benghazi. We’ve learned that this man, Sufian bin Qumu, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and long-time al Qaeda operative, was one of the lead planners along with Faraj al-Chalabi, whose ties to Osama bin Laden go back more than 15 years. He’s believed to have carried documents from the compound to the head of al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Just a few days ago we spoke here on Post Scripts about the importance of Guantanamo. Looks like we erred in allowing Sufian bin Qumu to leave. He returned to the field of battle, emboldened and strong, to do us great harm. Can you imagine his thoughts about us? How stupid we must seem to him.
I am ashamed to have to say it, but our parents wouldn’t have been so ignorant about the necessitates of war…no matter how unpleasant, distasteful, inconvenient, or difficult.
“Greg Hicks: Effectively, they’re not.”
And that is the $64 question that has been buried. Who gave the order? How hard can it be to back track up the chain of command?
Beat that horse all you like, it’s not coming back to life.
Libby : Beat that horse all you like, it’s not coming back to life.
Unbelievable! Libby, don’t you want to know the truth? Don’t you want to know what happened and who is responsible? Just because it has been over a year since it happened does not lessen the importance to know the truth. Are you saying the truth is not important? It seems that you are! It also seems that you are saying that only the political value of of the event is important. People died because of the negligence of this administration. We need to know who is responsible so we can make sure it never ever happens again!
Would love to know what our military troops think about their commander giving the stand down order leaving those guys to die knowing no help was coming.
Makes one wonder if Benghazi has anything to do with all of the commander being relieved of duty or being reassigned in the middle of their deployment or assignment.
Beginning with Army Gen. David D. McKiernan – 2009. First 4-star relieved since Truman relieved MacArthur. Commanded in Afghanistan.
——
A List Of Many Of The Nearly 200 Senior Military Officers Fired By Obama: (Plus video interview of Dr. Jim Garrow, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.)
” There have been rather a lot, to say the least, of firings, demotions, relievings and disciplinings of hundreds of officers in our military under this present regime. The grounds range from “leaving blast doors on nukes open” to “loss of confidence in command ability” to “mishandling of funds” to “inappropriate relationships” to “gambling with counterfeit chips” to “inappropriate behavior” to “low morale in troops commanded” to you-name-it-you-got-it…and, now you’re gonna’ get it!
Listed below are some of the various commanders, vice-commanders, etc. who have been relieved, fired, forced into early retirement and otherwise let go of…or, gotten rid of…depending on how one chooses to interpret all this. Grand Total thus far: 197 (Mostly Colonel and above. 127 AF majors included…they all occurred at one time, apparently). Also, provided are 11 links to various articles about said officers and the various ends of their military careers.
This does not include any of the stories about the pressure or attacks, if you will, made on those of all ranks, high and low, done by this regime or their “agents” and based on religious grounds or their stances on traditional marriage or statements or actions that have been deemed offensive to Islam…beliefs held by many who have been persecuted, if not out-right prosecuted, for said religious and/or traditional belief stances.
This is offered not as proof of any attempt to purge our military of those deemed un-fit by this present regime. It is simply offered as a PARTIAL listing of what has happened so far under the present “C-i-C.” Please note “PARTIAL.” This writer does not claim this list is complete.
It remains to be seen if more “disciplinary actions” are taken or are warranted. I simply find myself asking, as the picture below asks:”
Continue to list:
http://youviewed.com/2013/10/23/a-list-of-many-of-the-nearly-200-senior-military-officers-fired-by-obama/
Why do so Many Conservatives Want out of Their States?:
“This is the second part of a six-part series that is exclusive to TheBlaze.
Call state and county realignment efforts in Colorado, California, and Maryland burgeoning rebellions against leftist-driven big government imposition.
Conservative and rural Coloradans, for example, are so excised by the high-handedness of urban liberals who dominate the Centennial State’s government that 11 northeastern counties have declared a desire to form their own state. \Votes are scheduled in those counties on Nov. 5.
Meanwhile, five counties in Maryland’s panhandle want out. Two counties in northern California want no part of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, where liberal Democrats have an unending lock on state government.”
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/a-special-blaze-report-series-why-do-so-many-conservatives-want-out-of-their-states/
Oops, posted #4 to the wrong article. Sorry
“Makes one wonder if Benghazi has anything to do with all of the commander being relieved of duty or being reassigned in the middle of their deployment or assignment.”
Well, as McKiernan was relieved of his position in 2009 and the Benghazi attack was in 2012, probably not much.
But have a look at this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-failure/309148/
“Failure of those wars” my A%%!
The war in Iraq was difficult but we won the war and, as has happened several times since the radical commies gained too much influence, we lost the transition period following the war. The transformational president saw to it!
Libby doesn’t want to know the truth about Benghazi…she wants Hillary as our next disasterous president.
Run America…run as fast as you can away from these destroyers!
Peggy it all has to do with leadership…or I should say lousy leadership. The guy at the top was not prepared for this job…still isn’t.
We won nothing in Iraq but billions more in debt, super rich defense contractors and broken veterans. Somehow we managed to build bridges and roads over there, but we just can’t make that happen here because we can’t afford it. We also have a nice billion dollar embassy over there.
Personally, I don’t care about Benghazi. We reduced the budget for security so how do we have any room to point fingers and blame. This is also a big deal for John McCain and Lindsay Graham, two of the biggest embarrassments of the Republican party. 4 people died it was really sad. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time. I would rather have hearings about bank fraud and corrupt defense contractors that are scamming taxpayers.
Evidently that lame stream bastion of the left, 60 Minutes” thinks Benghazi still relevant, no matter what poor al-Libby wishes. Those silly TV journalists!
“The war in Iraq was difficult but we won the war and, as has happened several times since the radical commies gained too much influence, we lost the transition period following the war. The transformational president saw to it!”
Tina, if the war creates a state so unstable that our gains (whatever they were?) evaporate the moment we leave … then Tina … we lost.
I don’t even want to think about Afghanistan. We’re probably going to be “droning” the freakin’ Taliban til the end of freakin’ time.
Duh Libby, the list was for ALL of the years Obama has been CIC.
The reason I highlighted McKiernan was because he was the first 4-star relieved since Truman relieved MacArthur. Obama has removed 12 generals since 2009 and 2013 isn’t over yet. Did you get that Libby? TWELVE Generals in 4.5 years, with 9 since 2012 and still counting.
Why so many since 2012? What could be going on in our military the past year that warranted so many generals and other high ranking commanders be removed? Hopefully, when their commander in chief is no longer president they will feel free to disclose the truth as Colin Powell did, who wasn’t removed from his command, he retired.
While I found your article interesting it was really more of a hypocritical hit piece probably written by some left-wing anti-war fanatic. Obama won’t fire anyone from Lois Lerner and the other IRS incompetent supervisors to duck and cover Eric Holder and lying Hillary Clinton, but he’ll set a record for firing the most Generals in US history.
Pathetic!!
I’m very confused. Greg Hicks’ claim that no one was sent to help in Benghazi has been contradicted by numerous high-ranking officers in the military, and is ridiculous on its face–one of the men killed in the attack was Glen Doherty, who was sent as part of a rescue team from Tripoli. FOX News did a story on him, yet they continue to claim no help was sent even when they reported on said help? Ridiculous. It’s also pretty insulting to the memory of Doherty to pretend a rescue team was never sent.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/26/who-was-glen-doherty/
As for why no larger military response was made, I can’t believe Lara Logan still thinks this is a “lingering question.” This question has been answered by numerous high-ranking military personnel, including Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both Bush and Obama:
“I think the one place where I might be able to say something useful has to do with some of the talk of the military response. And I listened to the testimony of both Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey, and frankly had I been in the job at the time, I think that my decisions would have been just as theirs were. We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, despite all the turmoil that’s going on with planes on strip alert, troops ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. And so getting someone there in a timely way would have been very difficult if not impossible.
And frankly I’ve heard, well, why didn’t you just fly a fighter jet over there to scare ’em with the noise or something. Given the number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from Qaddafi’s arsenals I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances.
And with respect to sending in Special Forces or a small group of people to try and provide help, based on everything I’ve read people really didn’t know what was going on in Benghazi contemporaneously, and to send some small number of Special Forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think would have been very dangerous and personally I would not have approved that because we just don’t — it’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces. The one thing our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way, and there just wasn’t time.”
CBS News ran these quotes at the time too! These are supposed to be investigative reporters, and they can’t even dig through their own news archives to answer the “lingering questions?” The 60 Minutes piece doesn’t seem to give any time to the military personnel that has explained why no larger military response was sent. This is irresponsible journalism. When you bring up a question like this and the answers are readily available, you need to provide them to your viewers.
Another former Sec. of Defense, Leon Panetta:
“And frankly, without an adequate warning, there was not enough time, given the speed of the attack, for armed military assets to respond. That’s not just my view or General Dempsey’s view; it was the view of the Accountability Review Board that studied what happened on that day.
In the months since the tragedy at the temporary mission facility and the nearby annex in Benghazi, we’ve learned that there were actually two short-duration attacks that occurred some six hours apart. And again, there was no specific intelligence that indicated that a second attack would occur at the annex, which was located some two miles away.
The bottom line is this: that we were not dealing with a prolonged or continuous assault which could have been brought to an end by a U.S. military response. Very simply, although we had forces deployed to the region, time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.
Despite the uncertainty at the time, the Department of Defense and the rest of the United States government spared no effort to do everything we could to try to save American lives. Before, during and after the attack, every request the Department of Defense received, we did, we accomplished. But again, four Americans’ lives were lost, and we all have a responsibility to make sure that that does not happen again.”
Gen. Martin Dempsey in a written congressional testimony:
“Our military was appropriately responsive. We acted quickly once notified of the attacks on the Temporary Mission Facility. … We also repositioned forces based on direction from the President of the United States and Secretary of Defense. We deployed a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team to Tripoli while a second team prepared to deploy. We directed the deployment of a special operations force in the United States and one already in Europe to intermediate staging bases. We also provided C-17 airlift for medical evacuation. We did what our posture and capabilities allowed.”
http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2013/02%20February/Dempsey%2002-07-13.pdf
Admiral Mike Mullen:
“It goes to our core, when people are in trouble, to do everything we possibly can to help them out. And there were many forces that moved that night, including a special operation force in Europe that ended up in a base in southern Europe, a large special operations force from the United States which moved under direction as soon as — as soon as they were given orders. A group of Marines that essentially were sent in from Spain into Tripoli the next day. It literally became — this is not something you can just wish to happen instantly. There’s a lot of planning, preparation, as rapidly — to do it as rapidly as one can do it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ycUN603xEE
Greg Hicks has changed his testimony a few times since the event. He claimed once that he was fired as punishment for speaking out against Benghazi, but in sworn testimony said he admitted that he voluntarily didn’t want to go back so that he could spend more time with his family.
Peggy: “Would love to know what our military troops think about their commander giving the stand down order leaving those guys to die knowing no help was coming.”
That. Did. Not. Happen.
The AP:
“The former commander of a four-member Army Special Forces unit in Tripoli, Libya, denied Wednesday that he was told to stand down during last year’s deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
In a closed-door session with the House Armed Services Committee, Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson said his commanders told him to remain in the capital of Tripoli to defend Americans in the event of additional attacks and to help survivors being evacuated from Benghazi.
“Contrary to news reports, Gibson was not ordered to ‘stand down’ by higher command authorities in response to his understandable desire to lead a group of three other special forces soldiers to Benghazi,” the Republican-led committee said in a summary of its classified briefing with military officials, including Gibson.”
http://azstarnet.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/officer-no-libya-stand-down-order/article_3ebd5c58-41ab-577c-98ac-331d752cc9c4.html
General Martin Dempsey:
“GEN. DEMPSEY: They weren’t told to stand down. A stand down means don’t do anything. They were told to — that the mission they were asked to perform was not in Benghazi but was at Tripoli Airport.”
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220017
US News:
“Pentagon spokesmen had previously stated that no U.S. assets were ever told to “stand down” the night of the attack in Benghazi. Air Force Maj. Rob Firman told USA Today Tuesday that the military’s account of this response “hasn’t changed.”
“There was never any kind of stand down order to anybody,” Firman said.
Firman reaffirmed this statement to U.S. News following Hicks’ Wednesday testimony.”
The claim that a “stand down” order was given also originated from Hicks, who has already been caught contradicting himself. Everyone else denies this claim. It never happened. Hicks made it up.
Chris,
“Doherty left Tripoli at about midnight local time, after chartering a local plane for the rescue. There were no U.S. air assets in Tripoli. He and the quick reaction force arrived at the CIA annex at 5:15 a.m. after being delayed for several hours at the Benghazi airport by the Libyans. The CIA annex, a fortress-like compound with several buildings, is where the Americans in Benghazi had retreated and the body of State Department official Sean Smith had been brought after the initial attack. At the time, Stevens was still missing.
Doherty joined Tyrone Woods, another highly trained former SEAL, on the roof of one of the buildings at the CIA annex. Within minutes, mortars were fired. Doherty and Woods were both killed.”
Those US buildings had been targeted in an advance by a terrorist team who were highly trained fighters. The SOB that led the raid was the guy we recently captured in Lybia. He was living right out in the open. Al Qaeda flags are still flying over government buildings in this rate hole of a country.
Princess had it not been squandered what we would have had is a civil democracy in the heart of the ME and an ally in the war against the Al Qaeda types. this is no small thing as we are now discovering as Iraq and others are falling into militant/terrorist control and Iran gets bolder and stronger. Defense of this nation is the one big thing the federal government is required to do for us.
It is not true that we don’t have the money. the truth is the money has been badly managed and socialists have created unsustainable programs that are bankrupting the country. meanwhile the currently empowered have done the worst possible thing to address the failing economy…they have put us in greater debt through QE and created yet another big government program that also will not be sustainable.
The biggest reason for all of this is that the population has been poorly educated for decades and nobody understands (or is even aware) of what is happening.
” We reduced the budget for security so how do we have any room to point fingers and blame.”
We can point fingers of blame because administrators had more security when they traveled than did our ambassador in one of the most dangerous of countries. We can complain because our embassies in free non-dangerous countries have much more security than Chris Stevens was allowed in Benghazi. Mismanagement of resources and a failure to take appropriate measures…due diligence…is the only reason those people died.
“This is also a big deal for John McCain and Lindsay Graham, two of the biggest embarrassments of the Republican party.”
Agree with your assessment of the men. Regardless, Benghazi is a very big deal.
You can forget about the prosecutions, at least for now.
Libby: “Tina, if the war creates a state so unstable that our gains (whatever they were?) evaporate the moment we leave … then Tina … we lost.”
The country was stable when Obama took the Presidency. His absolutely terrible leadership (It takes real talent to offend both our enemies and our allies) and his lack of experience have brought the entire region to crisis.
A more qualified person in the White House would have made all the difference.
Our guys won the war…just like they did in Viet Nam…the idiots in DC and the media lost the clean up and follow through.
Chris there were plenty of warning bells sounded by Chris Stevens weeks before this event. Adequate security was denied. And why did we have him there in that dangerous place where we knew al Qaeda was active and not have a team ready to deploy at a moments notice?The General is commenting in hindsight about events as they were. The real question is why were they left so vulnerable…and why the cover up story afterward?
“The country was stable when Obama took the Presidency.”
Fiction. Anybody with the sense, the brains and the means to do so had left Iraq by the time Obama came to office. Al-Maliki is stuck trying to keep the peace in a country populated by impoverished morons, robber barons and terrorists.
“Our guys won the war…just like they did in Viet Nam…the idiots in DC and the media lost the clean up and follow through.”
Tina, I don’t know how to break this to you, but Viet Nam is a communist country and has been ever since we were (how can you possibly have forgotten that awful footage) driven out.
LOL That is a dead horse.
How many soldiers and innocent people died in an illegal war in iraq. Why was it a drone teat flew into the second building at the world trade center?
Look no windows! Right after the money went missing from the pentagon by the guy who wons a remote aircraft company?
Why was the Bin laden family a major investor in the carlyle group and why does the Bush family profit off the NSA spying?
Who and what runs the CIA?
The real issues are of no importance. Just the Spin for the Koch masters these days
Tina: “Chris there were plenty of warning bells sounded by Chris Stevens weeks before this event. Adequate security was denied. And why did we have him there in that dangerous place where we knew al Qaeda was active and not have a team ready to deploy at a moments notice?The General is commenting in hindsight about events as they were. The real question is why were they left so vulnerable…”
Tina, I agree that there should have been more security. That is the one valid point among all this ridiculous scandal-mongering. But the same could be said of the embassies that were attacked during the Bush and Reagan administrations. Where was your outrage then? More people died in those attacks, and it was never treated as a scandal.
“and why the cover up story afterward?”
There was no cover-up. As you know, there were plenty of eyewitness reports that attributed the attack to radicals upset over the stupid anti-Islam video and ignorantly blaming the United States for “allowing” it to be made. The administration immediately made it clear that while the video was awful, it was no excuse for violence. Every department that edited the talking points found it appropriate to mention the video because so many reports on the ground connected back to that. Intelligence had evidence that the attack was coordinated beforehand but didn’t want it revealed because they didn’t want to tip off the responsible parties. The administration corrected the record a couple weeks later when it was clear the attacks were coordinated for other reasons.
This is fairly run-of-the-mill government incompetence and secrecy. It doesn’t qualify as a “scandal” any more than previous attacks on embassies did. It certainly isn’t “worse than Watergate” as many have said.
“Our guys won the war…just like they did in Viet Nam…”
Oh dear.