The State Department's Accountability Review Board finally released its report last week, and it's notable in that we now know even less than we did before.
The report does say that security at the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “grossly inadequate” - the result of “systemic failures” of leadership and management. And it totally discredits the Obama administration’s deliberate lie that the murder of four Americans was a result of a “spontaneous” protest to an offensive video.
What it doesn't say a word about, of course, is whodunnit, or provide any of the answers to a number of relevant questions about what could be justifiably termed a coverup.
The whodunnit part was supposedly resolved by the Administration's announcement of the resignation of four State Department underlings because of their performance blunders on Benghazi.Of Course, as it turned out, they didn't actually resign at all.
And the unanswered questions?
The Obama Administration has live action, real time films from two drones that were overhead during the seven hour attack on the consulate, as well as from security cameras on site. It also has live transcripts of phone calls between the CIA annex and the consulate and the Situation Room in Washington and the debriefings and testimonies of the U.S. personnel who were evacuated from Benghazi and knew this was an organized attack and not a spontaneous demonstration over a video.
All of this material has been classified top secret so that no one in Congress can see them. Why? What is the justification for that, when according to President Obama's own words, his administration was going to be the most transparent in history?
And since the Administration obviously had access to all these items within 24 hours of the attack, why the false narrative about a spontaneous demonstration over a video for two weeks? President Obama and Secretary Clinton obviously had access to this material. Why did they make what amounted to false statements to the American people? And if they're still claiming that it was the intelligence community that withheld the information that led to those false statements, whom withheld it? And why haven't they been disciplined for it?
There were a number of previous assaults on foreign offices in Benghazi, including attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that occurred in April and June 2012, the local Red Cross offices and an assassination attempt on the British ambassador in Benghazi. The British and the Red Cross office both pulled out because of the deteriorating security situation. Did the president’s national security staff make him aware of this? And if he was informed, what steps did he take to ensure that our personnel there were better protected?When did Secretary Hillary Clinton become aware of the previous attacks and what steps did she take to protect State Department officials in Benghazi?
The attack took place on the anniversary of 9/11, and a year after the assassination of Osama bin-Laden. Any reasonable person could have foreseen massive unrest in the Arab world, especially in Benghazi, a known hotbed of al-Qaeda and similar salifists in Libya.Why weren't American military units and assets on alert and in place to protect our consulate? Why was security stripped from the consulate despite Ambassador Stevens' own requests?
The attack took place over seven hours. We had special ops military assets two hours away expressly designed for these situations that could have saved our people, we had helicopter gunships within easy reach and two ex-Seals with a laser sight in the CIA annex pinpointing targets and calling out coordinates.
During those seven hours, what were Secretary Clinton and President Obama doing? Where were their whereabouts?
These are all questions the State Department's Accountability Review Board report didn't answer at all.
That's to be expected. One doesn't ask a fox to investigate a murder in a hen house.
One place some of the answers were expected to come from was Hillary Clinton, who was scheduled to testify before Congress on the matter.
Except surpise, she suddenly contracted stomach flu, fainted and reportedly sustained a small concussion. Perhaps she was reliving being shot at by sniper fire is Bosnia. At any rate, she was not able to appear.
The convenience of this for everyone concerned is obvious. After Mrs. Clinton fully recovers - months later- Benghazi and four dead Americans will be conveniently forgotten by the non-Fox media, and Mrs. Clinton undoubtedly just wouldn't recall certain details. That concussion,you know. Nasty.
Except a number of Republicans in the Senate had a surprise of their own.
They've announced that they will hold up any votes on confirming Senator John Kerry as her successor as Secretary of State until she comes to congress and testifies. So Mrs. Clinton might just be under some pressure now by the Obama White House to recover her strength, slap on a clean pantsuit and answer a few tough questions.
The cover up. It's always worst than the original crime.
Are we still on this Benghazi business? I thought you guys had already lynched the black woman. I guess it's just a slow news day.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteYour flippant dismissal of very legitimate questions asked by Rob is appalling. At the very least, we had a massive intellegence failure here simillar to the massive intellegence failure that led to the attacks of 911.
In the attacks on our embassy in Benghazi nobody has been held accountable for their failures. This is what happened after 911. No one was held accountable for their failures. In fact, as I recall the head of CIA received a medal from the President after the 911 attacks!!
Since we learned NOTHING from the 911 attacks and did nothing to correct our massive deficieny in intellegence capabilities, it should come as no surprise that we were caught equally unaware of the Benghazi attacks as we were on 911. Essentially CIA and other US intellegence services are staffed by politically well connected but incompetent boobs.
While the threat posed to us by Islamic terrorists and the nations who support them is far greater than the threat posed to us by Nazi Germany or Imperial Jsapn during WWII, it is far less than the threat posed to us by eihter Russia or China. Given that we were caught completely surprise by both 911 and Benghazi, there seems little cause for optimism that we would be prepared for a massive nuclear attack by Russia or a military action by China.
These events of 911 and Benghazi should provide convincing proof to policy makers that we need to seriously work to correct the shortcomings in our intellegence community. It seems to me the most prudent course of action would be a complete dismantling of US intellegence services and starting from scratch. Perhaps we could enlist the assistance of certain allies to assist us in constructing competent intellegence services that would be capable of meeting the challenges of the second decade of the 21st century.
Essentially your flippant dismissal of legitmate questions posed in this post is unwise and I'm not sure what a black woman or her lynching has to do with any of this. Instead of insulting the messenger you should be very concerned. The survival of our nation and our families may well depend us learning the correct lessons from this and fixing our intellegence services. The nature of the insult to the messenger and the lynching of a black woman who is not relevant to this situation would seem to indicate a non serious mind at work.
As stated previously, the questions posed by Rob are legitimate questions and should be investigated, I can offer probable answers to most of them. I think I've addressed many of them on other posts here but to address a few here. 1.)Any serious observer of US policy knows that the US government and big business is infiltrated by Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers at all important levels. As such, its likely POTUS and his team received faulty information at all levels. To challenge the Islamists is a threat to career advancement. It even seems possible that POTUS himself may be an Islamists symapthizer. 2.)Why were the military assets two hours away not deployed? In order to deploy these assets, they would have needed the permission of the nation's government where they were based. This could have taken days to obtain. After Benghazi is likely not significant to them. Not seeking the proper approval would have likely had grave repricussions for American interests. Also, they would have had to infiltrate the defenses put in place by the attackers of Benghazi. Essentially the commanders may have concluded the probability of success to be low and we might have ended up with a hostage situation circa Iran in 1979. Essentially a bad situation would have been made worse. 3.)What about the drones overhead? ran captured one of our drones sometime ago. They've likely figured out how it works and probably would have shared it with the attackers of Benghazi. The drones may have been giving false information or otherwise disabled.
In the previous post, I had neglected to mention that in addition the intellegence failures on 911 and the Benghazi Islamic attacks we also had a massive intellegence failure with regards to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Clearly those weapons were not where the intellegence community thought they'd be.
ReplyDeleteAs in the 911 attacks and the Benghazi attacks, no one in the intellegence community was held accountable for their failures here. Instead of holding careerist, political hack, incompetent boobs accountable the meme of "Bush lied, kids died" was presented. This conveniently took the pressure off of politically connected personnel. Very likely not an accident.
Again, if the intellegence community cannot be trusted to detect things like the 911 attacks, the Benghazi attacks, or to be correct on Iraq's WMD how can they be trusted to be properly prepared for things like a massive Russian nuclear attack, a Chinese military attack on the American mainland or against American interests, or an attack by Iranian proxies on the American mainland or against American interests. Given their prior track record, it would seem we cannot. It would be at best imprudent and at worst destructive for an American policy maker to rely on ANYTHING presented to him or her by the American intellegence community.
After the attacks of 911, the prudent course of action would have been to thorougly investigate what failed and why it failed. All top officials at CIA and other US intellegence servies should have been forced to resign immediately. A bit off topic but as I recall the top Admiral at Pearl Harbor was forced to resign shortly after the attack on this base. In fact, immediately after the attack the Admirmal removed the insignia from his uniform specifying his rank. I see no reason why 911 should be any different. After all this enemy poses a far greater threat than the enemies faced during WWII did. All officals in the intellegence community and the military whose duty is was to be ready for these types of things should have been forced to resign. Instead they got promotions, especially those at CIA!!