Merged State Department admits there was no protest at Benghazi consulate

Last time I checked, the AC-130 was specifically designed, and its crews specially and extensively trained, to fire accurately on point targets with an assortment of weapons selected specifically to address a range of firepower needs.

No strafing, just good, old-fashioned pylon turns, with the target on the ground standing in for the pylon, and all the best equipment and experience the USAF can bring to bear.
 
Cylinder said:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/

These are trained operators and would have known the basic steps to identify their positions in a way that any freindly aircraft would recognize. It's something ground forces and ground attack units are trained on. It's not something really sooper sekret but its not something I would post on an open forum on the internet with ground units actively using CAS.
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Wow, I love that story - it's by one of my favorite authors, Mr. U Sources. It's like one of those three-minute mysteries. How do you know the claimant is lying? I got it! Because he first insists that the CIA refused to call for military assistance (how horrible), but subsequently claims that UAVs, these "Spectre" aircraft, an "American Quick Response Team" and the CIA's Acapulco HEAT team (whose mission in the area Fox is happy to describe in detail) had all been deployed, but told not to fire or to "wait". Further, this source managed to be exactly where EVERYthing that's important happened. He was there when Woods bravely ignored his CIA orders and left for the consulate (where he remained in constant radio contact with CIA HQ, even though, you know, they had ordered him to not do what he was doing); was there to observe the consulate evacuation, was there to observe the seige on the CIA safehouse, was there to observe the Response team get sent from Tripoli and get held up in the airport, was there to see the UAV's get deployed, was there to see the two ex-SEALs get killed at 4am by one of four mortar shells that got fired at the CIA annex before (I think) a motorcade of friendly Libyans arrived...at 3am...and...yeah, I'm going with "not credible".
 
SezMe said:
Bill, was Beck the primary source for this post as ANTPogo claims? Knowing that Beck is a pathological liar, did you check other accounts of the scene? If so, which ones? If not, why not?
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Beck isn't the source. Woods (father of Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the attack) is the source. He was talking on Beck's show. It was an interview.


The father would not have been in much of a position to know much about what actually happened in Benghazi. Everything he heard would have been secondhand, and he would be assumed to be biased.
 
Aoidoi said:
I'm probably just being dense, but why does it matter if the attack was initially incorrectly linked to the protests occurring on the same date? At worst it appears to imply they weren't instantly communicating to everyone, cause I don't really see a motive for it being deliberate.

Am I missing something wherein "bad people used a protest as cover for murder" is a preferable storyline to "bad people committed pre-planned murder?"

Even if it is stipulated that they were wrong, I just don't see why it's significant. Explain please?
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ANTPogo said:
Partisan politics.
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Travis said:
Disgusting hypocrites try to make completely irrelevant aspect of tragic death (seriously why does it matter if it was due to a protest or a terrorist attack?) in order to try, and fail, to smear Obama....
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I started out with the goal of quoting all the posts in this thread that made sense and there were just too many for the effort to be worthwhile. My apologies to many people who made well written posts in defense of the obvious.

In the whole history of made up BS issues for partisan political purposes this one may be the most bogus. If enough, partisans parrot the same nonsense for long enough does this win votes for their side? I don't know but my sad guess is yes.

Guess what? Bad stuff happens, and whether we elect a Republican or a Democrat bad stuff will continue to happen. When 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon was Reagan to blame? Was Bush to blame for 9-11?

This thread is an embarrassment to the JREF forum. Alleged skeptics, whose partisan belief structures have led them to support the craziest of crazy Republican anti-Obama narratives.

In the immediate aftermath of a horrific event, the administration didn't know exactly what happened and a high ranking individual made a statement that was arguably wrong, although it wasn't even technically wrong since she never claimed absolute knowledge of what had gone on. Big friggin deal.

If you don't like Obama. Don't vote for him. If you disagree with his policies make arguments against those policies. But if you want to pretend you are a skeptic avoid buying into the Fox News/Republican spin machine to support your choices unless there is some actual evidence to support the spin.
 
Meadmaker said:
Beck isn't the source. Woods (father of Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the attack) is the source. He was talking on Beck's show. It was an interview.
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To continue the nitpick, I'll stick with Beck being the source since we have no idea how much editing was done on the video before being shown. Therefore, Beck has to take responsibility for what was put on the air, even if some of it came from Woods' mouth.
 
I can't believe the right is milking this as hard as they are. Faux News is going on about this being the biggest scandal since [take your pick] and it means the Obama foreign policy is in a shambles.

Puhleeese, the Middle East is in bad shape, sure. But there's nothing here that comes anywhere close to a foreign policy scandal or shambles.
 
Fox, et. al. have 24 hours to fill. Obama hasn't done much wrong lately so what else is there to harp on? Now, if they could catch him picking his nose, say, then we might enjoy a little variety.
 
Checkmite said:
Wow, I love that story - it's by one of my favorite authors, Mr. U Sources. It's like one of those three-minute mysteries. How do you know the claimant is lying? I got it! Because he first insists that the CIA refused to call for military assistance (how horrible), but subsequently claims that UAVs, these "Spectre" aircraft, an "American Quick Response Team" and the CIA's Acapulco HEAT team (whose mission in the area Fox is happy to describe in detail) had all been deployed, but told not to fire or to "wait". Further, this source managed to be exactly where EVERYthing that's important happened. He was there when Woods bravely ignored his CIA orders and left for the consulate (where he remained in constant radio contact with CIA HQ, even though, you know, they had ordered him to not do what he was doing); was there to observe the consulate evacuation, was there to observe the seige on the CIA safehouse, was there to observe the Response team get sent from Tripoli and get held up in the airport, was there to see the UAV's get deployed, was there to see the two ex-SEALs get killed at 4am by one of four mortar shells that got fired at the CIA annex before (I think) a motorcade of friendly Libyans arrived...at 3am...and...yeah, I'm going with "not credible".
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Sources. There's more than one.
 
I wonder if the "sources" are anything like those behind the latest "news" story around the right-wing blogs. Jim "Dim" Hoft (the guy behind the "Ambassador Stevens was dragged through the streets" lie) started it, and it's since become a hot item at RedState, FrontPage, American Thinker, and even the Washington Times.

All of these trace back to a single anonymous post at a fan forum for the LSU Tigers, which itself is merely repeating a self-described rumor passed on from some other anonymous person.
 
ANTPogo said:
I wonder if the "sources" are anything like those behind the latest "news" story around the right-wing blogs. Jim "Dim" Hoft (the guy behind the "Ambassador Stevens was dragged through the streets" lie) started it, and it's since become a hot item at RedState, FrontPage, American Thinker, and even the Washington Times.

All of these trace back to a single anonymous post at a fan forum for the LSU Tigers, which itself is merely repeating a self-described rumor passed on from some other anonymous person.
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Probably not, given the Leon Panetta has confirmed some of the story.

Most alarmingly:
"You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on," Panetta said. "(We) felt we could not put forces at risk in that situation."
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What risk is there to an F-18 or an AC-130 again?
 
ANTPogo said:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/night...ssiles-missing/story?id=14610199#.UI6TqSK65pg
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Yea, I'm not buying that the administration, who claims that this was a protest run amok, would believe members of said protest would be carrying around surface-to-air missiles just waiting for an American plane to fly overhead.

Even then, those missile are not much (if any) of a threat to an F-18. The CIA had drones in the air over the scene. Which means there was a base (or most likely a ship) that was launching them. Why not send an armed one up? Hell, we haven't even heard whether or not the drones in the air WERE armed or not yet.
 
Newtons Bit said:
Yea, I'm not buying that the administration, who claims that this was a protest run amok, would believe members of said protest would be carrying around surface-to-air missiles just waiting for an American plane to fly overhead.

Even then, those missile are not much (if any) of a threat to an F-18. The CIA had drones in the air over the scene. Which means there was a base (or most likely a ship) that was launching them. Why not send an armed one up? Hell, we haven't even heard whether or not the drones in the air WERE armed or not yet.
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Or whether or not they were able to identify any valid targets. Shooting up innocent people is a bad thing. You don't even know if there was an armed drone, but you think an arm drone would have helped?

What do people think could have been done with the gunship? With a missile? Shoot the bad guys right? Who were the bad guys? How could we identify them? Were they around long enough to even be targeted? It seems people are starting with the premise 'the administration choose not to help because they could have done something to help' and working backwards. Hell, scratch that, the premise 'they could have done something to help' at that point is enough of an assumption. What they could have done is had a full security detail always with the ambassador, but that's something to have been done well before any of this started.
 
It seems there's some confusion here about what actually happened during the attack. There wasn't a single attack that lasted hours, but two separate attacks.

The first attack happened at 9:40 PM, when the attackers stormed the consulate gates and set the building on fire. Local Libyan forces and a security team from the CIA annex a mile or so away from the Consulate respond to the attack, and manage to find the surviving Americans and the body of Sean Smith. They don't, however, find Ambassador Stevens, and everyone retreats to the safety of the annex.

At this point, the first attack is over, roughly an hour after it began, and the fighting has stopped. Looters take advantage of the lull to approach the compound, and find Ambassador Stevens, still alive, around midnight to 1 AM, and take him to a hospital in Benghazi.

Around 1 or 2 AM, security reinforcements from the main embassy in Tripoli arrive in Benghazi, in response to the call for help made by the Consulate when the first attack started. This group includes the former SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. The team does not go to the Consulate, but instead goes to the CIA annex where the Consulate survivors were taken. The CIA annex comes under intermittent small arms and RPG fire from locations in the city of Benghazi surrounding the annex, but not any kind of sustained assault.

Around 4 AM, the second attack begins, this time on the annex. Like the first attack, this attack also only lasts about an hour. It's during this fight that Doherty and Woods are killed, when mortars hit the annex buildings. The Americans decide to evacuate the annex, and make their way to the Benghazi airport, where they are flown out at dawn.

A lot of the confusion as to the "it was an attack, not a riot" conflicting claims comes from the fact that there were two separate attacks on two separate locations. The attack on the Consulate may not have been coordinated and prepared, since it apparently involved mobs storming the gates and using diesel fuel to set the building on fire. The attack on the annex, several hours later, was much more carefully prepared, since there were statements by survivors that the mortars were "zeroed in" on annex buildings.

And it's hard to see how any kind of airstrike would have helped during either one of those attacks.
 
I heard this morning that Special Forces members are resigning because of this event.

So let's reelect Obama; It is about time the USA fell to its knees, right? Who is with me?

Soon we will have no defense. But, hey, according to the Obama/Clinton logic, less military means less war. Riiiiight. Let's test that theory !!
 
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SezMe said:
Fox, et. al. have 24 hours to fill. Obama hasn't done much wrong lately so what else is there to harp on? Now, if they could catch him picking his nose, say, then we might enjoy a little variety.
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Don't you mean he has not done anything right ever?

Except for those lavish parties while our sons and daughters lay dying in combat. Those were wooooooooonderful !!

It is funny that you mention the news media. 'Member the body count? 'Memba that? Come on, you 'memba. When W was Commander in Chief, all your wonderful news media was slamming the wars by having a running body count nightly. Ah but now that we have a Democrat in office, that has stopped. Ah, but the body count in Afganistan has increased 4 times as much. So don't tell me the media is biased.... unless you mean biased in favor of Obama.

War is only bad when a Republican is in office according to our media. 'memba Cindy Sheehan? Come on, you did not forget her, did you? 'Memba her? Where did she go? Well she is still out protesting the war. But now that W is gone, she is just crazy. When W was there, we all felt her pain.
 
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