- Joined
- Jun 13, 2012
- Messages
- 3,195
- Reaction score
- 1,192
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Right
Robert Gates appeared on CBS's Face The Nation on Sunday and pushed back on the critics of Obama's military. See the video on his appearance at the link .
Gates, a Republican who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush in 2006 and agreed to stay through more than two years of President Obama's first term, repeatedly declined to criticize the policymakers who devised a response to the September 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.
"Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were," said Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William and Mary.
"We don't have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible." he explained.
Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to "scare them with the noise or something," Gates said, ignored the "number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi's arsenals."
"I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances," he said.
Another suggestion posed by some critics of the administration, to, as Gates said, "send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous."
"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces," he said. "The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way, and there just wasn't time to do that."
Gates: Some Benghazi critics have "cartoonish" view of military capability - CBS News
Assistance did arrive on time actually. Their names were Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Apparently Gates and the rest of the sycophants on the Left are unaware that Woods and Doherty were NOT stationed at the embassy. They were stationed at a separate location and rushed to help in defiance of orders.
This was an 8 hour attack at 2 separate locations. Doherty and Woods managed to rescue dozens and evacuate them to a separate location where they were eventually killed.
The Obama Administration FAILED to provide them backup within an 8 hour window. A stand down order was given twice that withheld any assistance both Woods and Doherty were requesting on the ground.
Gates and anyone else defending the Obama Administration here = pathetic, shameless and dishonest