He already did; weren’t you paying attention?
Yes, evacuating personnel from a consulate or CIA annex is just like a nuclear bomb run.
Terrorists attacks specifically when suicidal normally are over as fast as they start. So the situation in Benghazi was not long term confrontation against a well armed overwhelming force that there was a need to respond by sending in reinforcements from outside the country.
Some have argued here that it was an eight hour continuous ‘heavily armed assault’ where the President of the United States left Americans to die. Are you countering that argument by emphasizing that it was a terrorist attack and not a long running all day battle between good guys and bad guys and the good guys were left to die?
I already knew that. But thanks for sharing. You’re just repeating what I said earlier. All it takes is a crew and fuel for a departure that is measured in minutes.
Benghazi wasn’t a nuclear bombing mission. It was a rescue mission. It’s the same mission the military deals with in any conflict. It’s comparable to missions where troops are pinned down. They don’t have time to spend thinking of all the things that can go wrong. Otherwise the outcome is everybody dies. Which is what happened. They died waiting fur support which never came.
So we can now put to rest the idea that airplanes take time to get airborne. The next myth is the idea that rescue missions follow some kind of predefined timeline of preparation. They don’t. They can’t. No two are the same. In this case it’s a highly trained group who specialize in covert operations versus non-combat troops. One group has the advantage of stealth, real-time surveillance, weapons capable of shooting around corners and air support if needed. The other does not. The mission is time critical and they already have the assets needed to advance their agenda on the go. The time spent traveling to Benghazi is their planning window.
What a complete load of cow patties. There was no suicidal event. And they were only overwhelmed because nobody came to help.
Yes, they do. Only they do it beforehand. *Before *the mission is approved that resulted in troops getting bogged down in the first place. “What can go wrong ? What do we do when it does ?” is kind of a briefing room leitmotiv, since by and large officers are well aware of Murphy’s Law.
Well, I don’t want to make it sound like the military are the Borg or something, because there certainly are many many layers of retardation going on and interplaying at every decision-making level. It’s quite breathtaking, sometimes. But, you know, they try :).
Yeah. Other than the troops that did come, and the Lybian military that also came in to help, and ultimately repulsed the initial assault, they were just left to die. All of them. All two of them.
Wait, there were more than two people in the consulate ? This is getting altogether confusing.
BTW, can I ask you a quick question ? What would have been the purpose of deliberately letting the Ambassador et al. die, from Obama’s administration’s point of view ? Assuming temporarily and for the purpose of this hypothetical that Barack Obama is not, in fact, Snidely Whiplash ?
… so how do you enjoy *Ghosts *? Is the dog any good ?
I swear, so much jargon, so little actual notion of what any of it means. It’s beautiful, in a dysfunctional way.
you’re just stumbling down the road of “what could go wrong”. It’s a handwaving gesture applied to every situation including your drive to work.
what would be the purpose of launching a healthcare system that is so flawed only a handful of people can get through the process. None. He lacks the skill-sets for the job.
Holy non sequiturs, Batman !
I’m telling you military planning involves contingencies, lots of them. There’s no such thing as an impromptu rescue mission.
Trying and failing is one thing, you seem to be asserting that Obama deliberately didn’t even try, in fact according to you he even ordered other people not to do anything. That goes beyond incompetence and well into the Darth Vader-ish, don’t you think ?
and I’m telling you the flight time en-route IS the planning stage. If you apply your position to ANYTHING then the end result is an aborted attempt. If the President gets attacked we’ll just let it happen because it takes time to plan a rescue. If a riot breaks out don’t bother calling the police unless you have all the facts and a strategy that is guaranteed to succeed.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. The prudent thing to do was to launch an extraction mission ASAP. It puts people into a position to help. It allows time to access the situation and decide the best course of action.
You have an idiosyncratic notion of prudence, I must say.
ETA : and if “immediately launching an extraction mission”, no planning, no intel, just fuck it all GO GO GO is the prudent thing ; I wonder what the reckless and irresponsible thing would be 
I have made no claim that the Benghazi attacks were suicidal. Why does Magiver nsert that in the discussion?
All the facts presented on this thread and Magiver still believes the four State Department personnel and twenty some CIA staff were overwhelmed at the annex.
How does Magiver miss the revealed fact that one of the two killed by three of five mortar firings that lasted eleven minutes is what killed one of those from Tripoli 'WHO CAME TO HELP.
Magiver must have missed my post that is cited below.
I will repost abbreviated excerpts from one part of it that puts more of Magiver’s arguments to rest. The link is provided if anyone is interested in reading more.
●11:56 p.m.: CIA officers at the annex are attacked by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms. Sporadic attacks continue for about another hour. The attacks stop at 1:01 a.m., **and some assume the fight is over. **
●1:15 a.m.: CIA reinforcements arrive on a 45-minute flight from Tripoli in a plane they’ve hastily chartered. The Tripoli team includes four GRS security officers, a CIA case officer and two U.S. military personnel on loan to the agency. They don’t leave the Benghazi airport until 4:30 a.m.
●5:04 a.m.: The team from Tripoli arrives at the CIA base. Glen Doherty, one of the GRS men from Tripoli, goes to the roof and joins Woods in firing positions.
●5:15 a.m.: A new Libyan assault begins, this time with mortars. Two rounds miss and the next three hit the roof. The rooftop defenders never “laser the mortars,” as has been reported. They don’t know the weapons are in place until the indirect fire begins, nor are the mortars observed by the drone overhead. The defenders have focused their laser sights earlier on several Libyan attackers, as warnings not to fire. At 5:26 the attack is over. Woods and Doherty are dead and two others are wounded.
●6 a.m.: Libyan forces from the military intelligence service finally arrive, now with 50 vehicles. They escort the Americans to the airport. A first group of 18, including two wounded, depart at 7 a.m. A second group of 12, plus the four dead, leave at 10 a.m. for Tripoli and then the long flight back to America.
Magiver, a non-partisan SoD and several generals say you have a fatally simplistic view of things. Specifically that you think deploying troops is far simpler than it is.
Why are they wrong, and you, a person who is basing his view on an ignorant gut-intuition, right?
Does your local police and fire respond to emergencies or not? did the police in Boston take the day off after the bombing and think about it or did they respond immediately? They could have been blown up or shot by other terrorists and died.
Launching a mission immediately is the only way to get it there in time. The planning is done en-route. These are people, not machines that when launched can’t be controlled or redirected. It was a simple mission that was overwhelmingly in their favor from the start. They had the luxury of planning along with superior force and intelligence capabilities. They had the advantage of being able to call in an air strike.
Why do police and fire rescue respond immediately to deadly situations? Why are they wrong in their actions?
Obama is the CIC and nothing is said in public by senior military personnel that isn’t approved by the WH unless they wish to retire early.
An attack on a president in your country is different than an attack thousands of miles away where we don’t know what is going on.
Do you have an understanding that some things are different than others? And sometimes different things are treated differently.
You are basing the “best course” on, what a SoD calls, a cartoonish view of the military.
Because there aren’t random trained militants around fires. Because we don’t fly police into sites where there might be SAMs or perhaps thousands of militants wanting to kill them.
Maybe you should take a moment and ask why everyone who knows something about the subject doesn’t agree with you.
Why do you think that in your ignorance, you know more than experts? Isn’t that a little weird?
Oh, conspiracy theories. Good.
The people told to stand down from such a simple mission didn’t think it was cartoonish. Gates was talking out his ass.
It’s only a simple mission because you aren’t bothering to think about the level of complexity it has. Everything seems simple if you ignore the details.
Given your respective CVs, I think I know who I’m gonna trust on this issue.
Good point and another basic point must be made that it was the CIA and the Libyan Security Forces that got the surviving Americans out of there alive. The Libyans who are on our side were sufficient to keep the attackers from overwhelming the Annex but there were no assets available or a physical or structural defense in place to prevent the mortar attacks from hitting the machine gun they were manning on the roof and killing Woods and Dougherty.
This was a CIA operation going on and they did not have a concern about mortar or rocket attack in a city of 500,000?
The people of Benghazi appreciate what America and other nations to save them from annihilation from Gadhafi’s armored divisions and air force.
I believe there was a general acceptance by those good Americans working there that being in Benghazi after the US and others saved Benghazi was fairly safe and secure among friends.
The second battle was between the militants and the CIA/Friendly Libyans. The CIA’s job is to know things before they happen. It is a huge point… and barely ever discussed out there in the real world.
Its as if the State Department was expected to plan and execute that plan for the CIA staff’s security. Petraeus resigned in a scandal as all this unfolded. Hillary Clinton is a strong possibility to be the first Woman President.
The noise is made in the media that sells to the conservatives. The noise has to tie to Clinton and of course to Obama. A lot of the noise is not true.
I didn’t say there was a suicidal event. I wrote, "Terrorists attacks specifically when suicidal normally are over as fast as they start. " That is referring to terrorist attacks in general. Non-suicidal terrorist attacks are of short duration also. Terrorists seldom stand and fight if they are not suicidal to begin with.
The point is being made to counter your argument as well that the Islamic extremists attack in Benghazi was one long continuous attack that lasted for eight hours.
Your argument is incorrect.
I’ve cited several times that there was no stand down order, and the Special Forces who remained in Tripoli acknowledged they would have been of no help, and they probably saved a person’s life.
You have steadfastly refused to acknowledge this fact even though it has been cited multiple times from the sworn testimony of the Special Forces commander himself.
What is cartoonish is your repeating this allegation that has been debunked, but your denial that the facts aren’t on your side. I’m sure you’ll ignore this post like you’ve ignored the others, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the last time you will use the term “stand down.” But there is zero substance to these claims, no matter how many times you repeat them, because the truth is not on the side of this baseless talking point.