Wow my first moderator admonishment (albeit collective), and well deserved even. I’m starting to feel like a real board member.
Sorry, I’ll clean up my act.
Don’t you want to keep the thread interesting, almost exciting?
Because when it reins, it bores.
Sorry.
Any thread is interesting when facts are made available and to watch how certain parties deal or do not deal with them. This is a classic thread on that score.
Facts such as the Adminstration did not blame the youTube video for the attacks. Here is what Secretary Clinton said on September 12, the day after the attack:
QUOTE]Secretary of State Clinton also made a statement on September 12, describing the perpetrators as “heavily armed militants” and “a small and savage group – not the people or government of Libya.”[168] She also reaffirmed “America’s commitment to religious tolerance” and said “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet,” but whether true or not, that was not a justification for violence.[169 2012 Benghazi attack - Wikipedia
[/QUOTE]
She said clearly that ‘heavily armed militants’ were to blame because they are savages… Why do so many wish to believe that the Administration blamed the video for the attack?
It would be interesting to find out why that is.
Think about why actual words have very little meaning in our culture anymore.
“Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet,” but whether true or not, that was not a justification for violence. Secretary Clinton September 12, 2012.
Contact CBS and let us know. I gave you a cite. You refute it.
I gave a cite on what happened. It’s fact that Rice made these statements. She didn’t roll out of bed and suddenly find herself in a TV studio. It was deliberate and it would have the backing of her superiors.
customers don’t “walk in a door”. They call asking for a flight. And yes, 30 minutes to the time I’ve made the call I’ve had a plane in the air. And yes, planes that are used for charter are fueled up and the pilots on standby. That’s how charter companies operate. Flight plans can be filed from your phone and they’re not “approved”. They’re just filed. And there is no mandate that a flight plan be filed but that’s the norm if it’s a fast pressurized plane because they fly above 18,000 feet which requires a flight plan. I’ve sent planes into some really small airports that were strictly VFR.
Slot times at busy airports would have to be arranged but there is no reason for a charter to operate out of or into a major airport. In fact, it’s much more customer friendly to avoid major airports. Nobody would charter a plane to O’Hare when there are literally 20 airports around it that are easier to get to with a car or truck.
Getting an airplane in the air is usually the easy part. Getting transportation and ground handling at either end takes up most of the time. The hardest charter I ever had involved talking a forestry group into offloading a plane with their equipment. It was the only airport within hundreds of miles and it was an emergency pipeline part that was a bit heavy to hand offload. Keep in mind I did chartering as an aside to my regular job. While I was somewhat good at it because of my pilot background I was hardly an industry guru. It was just shit work that landed on my desk.
So I’m guessing people who spend their lives training for fast response missions are more than capable of finding the end of a runway without any special magic.
…you have already been provided with a cite that shows it would take six hours from being given the go-ahead to get a flight and a team in the air. Charter companies don’t operate like the military. I very much doubt that plane you got on in thirty minutes came cheap. You are aware of how many airfields the US Military operate worldwide, correct? You want them all to have planes on the ground ready to take off in half an hour? How much would this cost? How much are you willing to pay to have a plane ready to go within 30 minutes on every US airfield worldwide?
Not only Americans died on 9/11. I’m absolutely sure that there would have been an uproar if Russia and China started dropping troops on New York within half an hour of the planes striking the towers. I’m glad that the United States government isn’t stupid enough to commit to put troops on the ground of a sovereign nation without knowing exactly what is going on first.
You gave a cite and I posted excerpts from that cite where Rice said exactly what I argue that she said. She blamed the attacks.
Since you were unable to respond to my post dated 11-20-2013 at 04:43 AM (324a0443) I will post it again so all the good readers can see what exactly wht it was that you have not responded to without having to look it up.
(A) I’m fairly certain it was covered to death. -Magiver
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/11/16/flashback-what-susan-rice-said-about-benghazi/ -cited by Magiver
(B.a) in response to (A) "This is an explicit quote from Ambassador Rice where she blames the attack on “some individual clusters of (protest-hijacking) extremists who came with heavier weapons”. " -NotfooledbyW
B](B.b)** in response to (A) So Magiver’s cite establishes that Rice:
(a) was not speaking with ‘certainty what transpired’ just yet and…
(b) the best assessment (that was we know now was provided by the CIA in talking points) was a ‘small number of people came to - the consulate to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo.’, and…
(c) the attack was actually blamed on “some individual clusters of (protest-hijacking) extremists who came with heavier weapons”. -NotfooledbyW
B](B.c)** in response to (A) Thus Magiver has provided a cite that not only shows that Magiver is wrong but that I am absolutely right.
The attack was not blamed on the video.
If a small number of people had shown up to replicate what happened in Cairo as Rice said then Stevens would not have been killed. He was killed as Rice said by extremists who brought heavy weapons and then hijacked what was believed to be a small crowd gathered to protest.
There were no hijackers who brought heavy weapons to the violent protest in Cairo. Rice was not blaming the deaths of Stevens and Smith on the protest or a video. Those words are not what she said.
She repeated the talking points prepared by the CIA verbatim. She blamed the deaths of Stevens and Smith on heavily armed attackers and her entire statement was qualified with her notice that the investigation would tell us what actually transpired. -NotfooledbyW
It is a fact that Rice made the statements. No one is arguing with that. It is the content of the statements where your invalid arguments begin to fail and continue to fail throughout your entire opinion of what happened at Benghazi, what could have been during the attacks at Benghazi, and what was said about Benghazi after it happened.
Your cites contradict what you claim they say. And I’d like to see you deal with it rather than just repeat the fact that you were able to provide a link to quotes of what Susan Rice actually said.
Magliver’s argument is so full of holes you could drive a **fifty truck convoy **through it. That is what the Libyan’s sent to escort the thirty or so Americans out of the CIA Annex compound safely back to the airport.
But more important is that I can go to a conservative news source and learn that even the " situation at the **CIA annex **has calmed" about three hours and twenty minutes after the original attack had begun. The fight at the consulate compound was over and Stevens was at the hospital.
And we learn from the CNS report that the mortar barrage that killed Woods and Dougherty lasted start to finish with about four being fired a total of eleven minutes. This eleven minute barrage took place about four hours after the CIA team reported a lull in the fighting.
And just to put it on the record here is part of the David Ignatius timeline dealing with events at the Annex that CNS based much of their report on. It is always best to go to the source rather than believe the interpretation of it by partisan news services:
Keeping all Americans hunkered down at the CIA Annex until sufficient heavy Libyan security could arrive to escort them to safety was clearly the best call. There was nothing that could be done to stop the eleven minute mortar barrage that two of four shells made a direct hit.
Can anyone explain why it is so fucking important what Rice said on the Sunday talk shows?
And again, note that the mortar attack came minutes after more Americans arrived at the annex. It could have been a coincidence, but it’s at least as likely that the militia was waiting for more targets, and would have fired on a rescue team regardless of when it arrived.
Because it’s all they got. The studies and reports afterward show there was nothing the military could appropriately do, there were more numerous and deadly attacks on embassies and compounds under the Bush administration, and the Republicans voted to limit spending for embassy security. The only way to manufacture this tragic event into a scandal is to claim a lie, assert some kind of coverup, and … well then it sorta falls apart. But it lasts longer than the other potential scandals, so it was the best they had.
It was refuted once, but I will repeat for everyone’s benefit.
A State Department official testified in May 2013 that after a first rescue team went from Tripoli to Benghazi (and was subsequently stuck at the airport for hours), there was a second team of four Special Forces soldiers that was in Tripoli.
In June 2013, the commander of that Special Forces detachment testified to the House Armed Services Committee. The Republicans on that committee then issued a press release, which said in part:
[quote]
In his testimony, LTC Gibson clarified his responsibilities and actions during the attack. 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. Rather, he was ordered to remain in Tripoli to defend Americans there in anticipation of possible additional attacks, and to assist the survivors as they returned from Benghazi. Gibson acknowledged that had he deployed to Benghazi he would have left Americans in Tripoli undefended. He also stated that in hindsight, he would not have been able to get to Benghazi in time to make a difference, and as it turned out his medic was needed to provide urgent assistance to survivors once they arrived in Tripoli."
[quote]
Cite.And what was the “urgent assistance” that was provided?
According to the right-wing Washington Times, quoting the same State Department official, the urgent assistance “saved the leg and probably the life” of one of the evacuees from Benghazi.
I’m sure Col. Gibson was pissed off at the time. But the point that almost everyone here has been making is that, in hindsight, rushing more people in wouldn’t have made a difference. Col. Gibson himself acknowledged that in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee. Why is it so difficult for you to see, even with the benefit of hindsight, that Col. Gibson and most posters in this thread are in agreement that your plan wouldn’t have worked?
Magiver’s plan is different, and far bolder: rather than stating that the second team of four should have been deployed from Tripoli, he’s arguing that a FAST or SO team from Europe should have been dropped into Benghazi.
Can somebody explain to me why what happened after the attack actually started is more important than what happened before it, in terms of the high-ranking administration officials concerned?
And just to state the obvious, that makes his plan less realistic as opposed to more achievable.
Because it points to the start of the cover-up of State Department mismanagement under Hillary Clinton.
No it doesn’t. It’s a bit of trivia, an utterly unconnected dot.
Riiiight. House Intelligence Subcommittees are well known to spend alot of time investigating trivial, unconnected dots.
You might wish to consider sourcing your trivial opinions elsewhere, Bob.
Just a suggestion.