U.S. Incompetence 9/11/12 Led to Benghazi

Introduction

I don't like Fox News. It's biased, snarky and amateurish. But underneath all their smoke and babbling about Libya and Benghazi... there... is... fire. What's going on is that arms are being shipped to Syria (very much as arms were smuggled to the contras in Nicaragua by the senior Bush and a bunch of White House staffers in the early 1980s). The ambassador was the go-between. When he was attacked, there was no clear compulsion to save him. This is not my own personal guess, it is an editorial from a retired Navy admiral, himself an expert on intelligence matters.

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Admiral James A. Lyons wrote an editorial for the Washington Times that included the following assertions:

• The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI and the Pentagon, apparently watched and listened to the assault on the U.S. consulate and cries for help but did nothing.

• One of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 – portable surface-to-air missiles – to Islamists and other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria.

• Stevens routinely used our Benghazi consulate (mission) to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East.

• Stevens played a "central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad Regime in Syria."

• There were two large warehouse buildings associated with the American mission in Benghazi. These storage rooms were probably looted. That warehoused equipment had been going to hardline jihadis.

• It now appears the White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, NDI, JCS and various other military commands monitored the entire battle in real time via frantic phone calls from our compound and video from an overhead drone. The cries for help and support went unanswered.

• Our Benghazi mission personnel, including our two former Navy SEALs, fought for seven hours without any assistance other than help from our embassy in Tripoli, which launched within 30 minutes an aircraft carrying six Americans and 16 Libyan security guards. It is understood they were instrumental in helping 22 of our Benghazi mission personnel escape the attack.

• Unbelievably, we still do not know how Ambassador Stevens died.

• Admiral Lyons feels sure that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella [an air base in Sicily, across the Mediterranean from Libya] ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded.

• Lyons also understood we had a C-130 gunship available [a point specifically denied by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta this week]

• According to a CIA spokesperson, "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need."

• Admiral Lyons’ conclusion: "A congressional committee should be immediately formed to get the facts out to the American people. Nothing less is acceptable."

Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.
Link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/28/lyonsobama-needs-come-clean-what-happened-benghazi/?page=all#pagebreak