Benghazi Attack for Dummies.

So when you talked about precision air support earlier in the thread, what was that all about?

ETA: And I truly struggle with several hypotheses about your posts in this thread:

  1. You have no real point or ideas and you’re just throwing out random thoughts as they hit you with little reflection on whether those are good ideas or not; or
  2. You had a concept for what the military response should have been, but you’re continually changing that idea as you realize that your original proposal doesn’t make sense; or
  3. You’re just a poor writer who cannot efficiently communicate your ideas to an audience, so most of your posts come across as poorly thought out.

I’m truly baffled as to which best describes your contributions to this thread.

Two problems with this. One, it presupposes that a rescue mission could have the annex evacuated by 5 am. Two, it presupposes that the mortar attack was launched at the earliest opportunity. In fact, it came minutes after the security team from Tripoli arrived at the annex. Given that, it’s likely that the attackers were waiting to catch as many Americans as possible at the annex before launching their mortar shells. Having more Americans at the annex makes the attack deadlier, it doesn’t prevent it.

No, I’m content to defer to the experts.

You missed the point of the comparison: if you send in a unplanned, small rescue team into an unknown, hostile area, odds are they will themselves require a rescue team, rather than being able to complete their original mission.

That’s just pure nonsense. It doesn’t take 24 hrs to fire up a plane and load it with the the basic equipment they train with every day. This wasn’t a raid on Osama Bin Laden’s house involving 6 months of planning. It was an insertion of troops to protect and retrieve US citizens. We were going to evacuate Americans anyway.

If I can charter a random plane and get it airborne in 30 minutes then I have to believe the military can do it with people who train to respond to emergencies. It’s not magic. It’s not even difficult. According to CBS they were told to stand down and they were furious about it.

We had drones in the area at the time. The only people operating blindly would be the poorly armed, poorly trained terrorists.

Give me the name of the Special Forces guy who was furious about it. Was it Lieutenant Colonel S.E. Gibson?

Ok, first, way to ignore four other reasons.

Second, you’re correct that we were going to evacuate Americans anyway, an operation which was successful, and didn’t involve para-dropped special forces from Europe having to fight their way to the annex.

Third, the CBS source is one man, Greg Hicks, who’s a diplomat and not a military officer, and he’s talking about a second team from Tripoli, not a FAST team. He’s also contradicted by the military.

Fourth, the commander of that team denies that he was told to stand down.

Further obfuscation only lends credence to the fact that the Obama administration and his minions egregiously failed in their duties in more ways than one, responsible for the deaths of an ambassador, some of his staff and 2 military members from the Tripoli-based rescue attempt - first ambassador to lose his life in the line of service since a 1988 plane crash and only the eighth ever. It was a disgrace. The terrorists won again. Hooray for America!

Read Stevens’ Wikipedia article. It is succinct, factual and enlightening:

This is exactly as close as you can get to calling another poster a liar in Great Debates. Don’t do it again.

ooh! Am I a Minion? I love those guys with their pill-shaped form, yellow skin, single eye, and their goofy outfits!

Though I have to say, I thought they all worked for Gru. The fact that Obama has them too is totally cool!

So suppose in an alternate reality, special forces were thrown into this totally volatile situation, with no clear concept of what was going on and who the enemy was. What are the chances that Magiver wouldn’t be sitting here telling us how traitorous Obama was for sending in troops without proper preparation.

Suppose in an alternate reality you are right and I am wrong? :eek:

Hell, if he didn’t, I would!

I’m guessing what we really need is about half a dozen armored divisions, stationed at key strategic locales. The ones with big-ass runways that can handle those humongous cargo carriers, ready on 30 minute alert to scramble into the air, all gassed up rarin’ to go! Hell, if we just parachute that armored division onto the embassy grounds, well, that’s technically US territory, isn’t it?

But that’s all just a bunch of logistics.

One hundred billion percent odds of that. He’d be heaping on the criticism of ignoring the advice of his military commanders who were advising against the mission.

But there’s no principle that can’t be bent when it comes to criticizing a guy who likes basketball! (har har har! I know how Magiver likes to make funny jokes about the President, golf and basketball!1!)

What particular obfuscation are you talking about this time?

The Special forces commander saying he wasn’t told to stand down?

The military leaders saying they advised against the mission?

The CIA saying that the initial talking points given to Rice included a judgement (wrongly as it turns out) that it appeared that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by protest in Cairo”?
You are starting to remind me of the woman discussed in this thread who uses the fact that a medical organization advises against a certain diet as proof that such a diet is safe and effective.

You didn’t think I (or probably anyone else for that matter) was going to read that, did you?

Resorting to ad-hominem attacks isn’t helping your case either. Let’s see now, so far the Benghazi apologists have put forth fallacious arguments covering strawman, ad hoc hypothesis to ad hominem.

Maybe they will try setting a new record for the most ever number of different types of fallacious arguments given against a single topic in Dope history.

Hmm, well, apart from bandying those terms around against well supported arguments (you realy like to use ad hoc a lot), you have put forth…what exactly?

Actually what I did was the inverse of an ad hominem. An ad hominem attack involves some irrelevant fact about the author to as a basis for attacking their argument. So if I was to say that fact that you remind me of this women means your argument is bad. Instead I was saying the fact that your argument is bad makes you remind me of this women. This would probably be best classified as an analogy: the badness of your argument is similar to the badness of her argument.

A good example of an ad hominem attack would be something like, Rice is a subordinate of the hated Obama, therefore when Rice says that the CIA reports that “spontaneously inspired by protest in Cairo”, that lends credence to the idea that the CIA reports said no such thing.

But back to my original question, what specific obfuscation were you referring to and how did it lend credence to the exact opposite?

Pardon me? From the moment the customer walks in and says “I’d like to charter a flight” to the moment it takes off…30 minutes? You have pilots on 24/7 standby? The plane is warmed up and fueled? A flight plan can be filed and approved?

From a dead stop to in the air?

I find myself doubting this.

Dont forget Appeal to Authority:

Pfft, what would they know about it?

This is getting a bit personal. Posts ABOUT other posters - including those predicting how such would react - don’t help debate.

That goes for both sides. Rein it in, friends. Rein it in.