Does this mean that you weren’t hanging around the Elections forum in 2012? Or that you harbored the (clearly unfulfilled) hope that adaher learnt something from that experience?
By Og, he’s right! If Air Force units had been dispatched to the scene, they could have quickly acted in defense of the consulate by dropping bombs all over it! Trouble with that sort of action, it tends to be little non-specific. Sure, there are “smart bombs”, but not that damn smart!
Still, it would have proved a point: its our damned consulate, and if anybody is going to blow it to bits, by God, its going to be us!
Those are all questions that in other situations, such as Mogadishu, or any given day in Afghanistan or Iraq, are unknown. When people come under fire and request reinforcements, they get reinforcements.
And, did they have the answers when they finally got under way? To those questions, they apparently did NOT, so they went with the picture still unclear. They could have done that hours earlier.
This one wasn’t on Smapti’s list, but let’s give it a try:
Where is the enemy?
I’ve never come under mortar fire, but I get the impression that when you do, you don’t always see who’s firing it at you. Seems like that would be a useful thing to know before you start sending in the people with guns.
You don’t appear to know much about the military (not that I know a whole lot about ground forces- I was in the Navy). Sometimes they get reinforcements- sometimes they don’t.
That’s an easy one. The enemy is who the people at the consulate were shooting at. They killed a bucketload of them.
If they are available they get them. And if they don’t, they just don’t. The army doesn’t diddle themselves for hours asking questions they know they aren’t going to get the answers to and then eventually just send reinforcements anyway.
I rest my case.
So the instant anyone anywhere says they need help, the only acceptable solution is to “go in hot”, guns blazing like it’s a terror site mission in X-Com, completely ignorant of the circumstances on the ground or how dangerous it is for the “rescuers”?
How many military casualties are acceptable to save the lives of two civilians? One? Five? Fifty? A hundred? And since this is taking place in a heavily populated urban area with lots of civilian bystanders and local police/military who don’t all have color-coded bars over their heads saying who it’s OK to shoot at, how many civilian casualties are acceptable?
Because I guarantee you that if the military had responded to the Benghazi event the way you seem to think they should have, we’d be talking about a lot more than four Americans dead.
And you’d probably be chastizing Obama for being so irresponsible and brash.
Exactly. For boneheads like we have here, it’s a win-win situation!
SILENCE! Do you fools not realize that INTERNET GENERAL has spoken!!?
He’ll be over there with Internet Tough Guy awaiting you apology!
The people already there are already in combat. If the situation is clear enough for them to be firing, then you can bring in more people to fire.
Why don’t you ask the commander at Mogadishu, who used overwhelming force to get his boys out alive. Apparently you feel the rangers and the Blackhawk pilots should have been abandoned.
In any case, your questions are moot. The military DID send help, just not all that quickly. If they hadn’t sent help, then you would have a point.
Hey, I’m not an internet general. I just want to know why going in without enough information was unacceptable at one point, then perfectly fine many hours later.
Two other points which none of you can answer:
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If there was confusion over who the enemy was, how come the people that did come to help didn’t seem to be suffering from any such confusion? They got there, they went into action, they became heroes that day.
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Since when did it become US government, or even worse, US military policy, to abandon people under fire? Not that this decision was made. The insinuation that not going in was the right thing to do because there were only two civilians there is the most ignorant thing said on this thread. There was never a question of not sending help. The question is why it took so long.
How do you know that they didn’t have enough information once they did go in? That “many hours” may have been the time necessary to get that info.
Maybe there was confusion at first, but by the time the help came that confusion was resolved.
Already answered. Jeez- are these supposed to be tough questions? There is no scandal. Mistakes might have been made, and they should be investigated, but there’s no evidence of a coverup, much less evidence of any actual serious misconduct.
Which is why i wanted to know what information they needed. Many of the example questions posted weren’t known days after the attack.
There’s no major coverup or scandal here, as I admitted earlier. but there is a problem here and we should find out the extent of the problem. We know that the administration altered the talking points after denying that they did. We know that help was nearby and people were ordered not to help. The military says that didn’t happen. Witnesses say it did.
Not huge, earthshattering scandals, but enough that Congress, in its oversight role, should be getting answers to.
Maybe because in Somalia there was a U.S. military presence around the corner,able to respond to the Mogadishu crash? Maybe because the ‘FAST’ teams had to deploy from Rota, in Spain. Rota being 3000 km from Benghazi.
Meanwhile the C17 evacuation had to come all the way from bloody Germany.
The authority for tactical decisions is delegated by the CinC to his tactical commanders on the ground. You may be assured that an order from Obama to help would have been examined in the cold light of logistics and armament, and if it couldn’t be done, it would not be attempted.
If a military commander sends troops on a doomed rescue mission that he has every reason to believe is futile, I want that man hanged. To encourage the others, you understand.
Yeah, why didn’t Hitlery order the GI Joes or the X-Men to do something? Call up Iron Man? Do you have any idea how fucking stupid you sound? Half of Americans are below average in intelligence. You are one of them. Come to grips with that and shut the fuck up when the adults are talking.
If you honestly believe that US military policy is to reinforce every position under fire regardless of circumstances, then you’ve watched too many movies and played too many video games.
Again, I ask; how many military casualties are acceptable to prevent the deaths of two civilians?
Please, its The Iron Patriot.