President Obama is telling everyone that as soon as he heard about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, he gave the order for the military to do whatever they needed to do to save our people under attack. That is what he told a Denver interviewer on October 26. (I am paraphrasing.)
Within an hour of the start of the attack, Obama was in the White House with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. Presumably, that is where the order was issued.
Shouldn't there be a record of the President's Executive Order? Where is it?
The next step in the chain of command was General Carter Ham, head of Africom. He is the one who would actually send the troops under his command into action. First of all, Ham has reportedly stated he never received such an order. Worse yet, the reports are that Ham actually received an order not to send his troops into Benghazi (from Simonella in Sicily). When he reportedly decided to disregard that order, he was immediately relieved of command.
Obama-Panetta-Dempsey-Ham.
If Obama gave the order to save our diplomats in Benghazi, who countermanded that order? Panetta has stated for the record that it would not have been advisable to send in troops when they didn't know what the situation on the ground was. (I am again paraphrasing.) So did Panetta refuse to carry out Obama's order? Not likely. Nor do I think Dempsey would have countermanded such an order from the President.
I am no expert, and I could be dead wrong, but my common sense tells me that the decision not to send in the military was from the Commander in Chief. There are a lot of possible reasons floating around out there, but I think his main reason was that he did not want US military forces entering Libya (without permission) and taking action that would result in the loss of Libyan lives-either innocent or otherwise. For that, he was willing to abandon his American personnel in Libya to their fate.
If you disagree, please give me a more plausible explanation.
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3 comments:
I don't disagree but I want to point out that IF such an order went out as the President claims, there would be a lot of confirming wires, logs, and tapes of transmissions.
Obviously he is lying and hoping that the whole thing will blow over until after the election.
Here is an interesting analysis of the dynamics.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell103012.php3
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Siarlys, et al, can deny, dismiss, and/or minimize this all they want to, it is apparent that a LOT of lying has been done, and in fact continues, relative to this mess.
I would note that if the drone which took some video and whatever else it did was armed (and I admittedly don't know that was the case), we seem to use them just about every day in Afghanistan and Pakistan to blow up bad guys with little to no "collateral damage" due to the ROE's. Seems to me the same would have applied here, and if we got a couple innocents, it would have been in trying to save our own. No choice there.
elwood can speculate about what he admittedly doesn't know all day long, but it doesn't bring us one iota closer to the truth.
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