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APNewsBreak: No 'Stand Down' Order in Benghazi

rocket88 said:
True enough, but I think the "our **** doesn't stink" coming from Fenton is amusing...except that he actually believes it.
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It's very unlikely that he seriously believes it, though he may on some level of consciousness. More like denying it is much more satisfying than acknowledging it.

jmotivator said:
From the AP article, key quote:

1- The order was to remain in Tripoli and protect some three dozen embassy personnel rather than fly to Benghazi some 600 miles away after all Americans there would have been evacuated

2- Military officials differ on when that telephone conversation took place, but they agree that no help could have arrived in Benghazi in time. They put the call somewhere between 5:05 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. local time. It would take about 90 minutes to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi. The next U.S.-chartered plane to make the trip left at 6:49 a.m., meaning it could have arrived shortly before 9 a.m., nearly four hours after the second, 11-minute battle at the CIA facility ended at about 5:25 a.m.

The decision was made to stand down before anyone could have known the fight was over. This is Monday Morning Quarterbacking. At the time that the order was given Ambassador Stevens had not been located. Stevens wasn't located until his body was delivered to the airport hours later. So, in perspective, the order not to go in was made while the Ambassador was still missing and before anyone could possibly know the attacks wouldn't continue.

And of course, there is the little problem that the Mission came under attack hours earlier, hours after Steven sent a message to State warning of security problems in Benghazi, and after a month of asking for more security.

Also, the stand down orders have many sources, here is a Washington Times article about the hold up at the Annex that some soldiers saw as a stand down order.

In the end, when you take all of the information into account, the problem was that the piss poor security offered by the State Department of the Annex and Mission left the US security forces in an untenable position of having to bargain with local Libyan Militias for sufficient firepower to defend the Mission, and later defend the Annex because the US State Department didn't see a need to give military hardware and heavy weapons to security teams in a war zone.

So feel free to make the semantic argument of whether the exact words "stand down" were made to willing rescuers in Tripoli, or Italy, or the Benghazi annex, but in the end it's the same Charlie Foxtrot by another name.
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There are probably a 100 problems with what you just said, starting with the characterization of Benghazi as a "war zone" and ending with your suggestion that we needed a stronger security presence.

To begin with, its not our country and its a diplomatic embassy. "Relying" on foreign security to protect them is what you are supposed to do, because generally you aren't allowed to have a strong military presence or weapons grade technologies in someone else's country, particularly not at an embassy that is supposed to promote the ideals of peaceful cooperation and co-existence.

Granted, exceptions exist according to treaty, but those take a long time to make and revise and countries tend to be prickly about the exact terms.

Every country that has an embassy in the U.S. relies on foreign security.
 
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Morality Games said:
It's very unlikely that he seriously believes it, though he may on some level of consciousness. More like denying it is much more satisfying than acknowledging it.
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Then you should have no problem refuting what he says rather than going the ad hom route.
 
Montecresto said:
Oh, you and I have no conflict on that at all. I'm just saying that the underlying activity going on out of the Benghazi annex made it vulnerable to such attack to begin with.
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Ah. I get what you are saying.

I would say, and have said, our imperialism justifies the attacks on us in foreign nations. Although a embassy is not an imperialistic act on its own. But yes, our picking of winners and losers comes back to bite us every time.
 
Grant said:
Then you should have no problem refuting what he says rather than going the ad hom route.
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What, that Republicans politicized the deaths?

Blaming your political opposition for something is what it means to 'politicize' something. If you can find a Republican figure or official who said something resembling 'blame' against a political opponent concerning Benghazi, then you've found someone who politicized the deaths.

Not very ambiguous.
 
jmotivator said:
From the AP article, key quote:

1- The order was to remain in Tripoli and protect some three dozen embassy personnel rather than fly to Benghazi some 600 miles away after all Americans there would have been evacuated

2- Military officials differ on when that telephone conversation took place, but they agree that no help could have arrived in Benghazi in time. They put the call somewhere between 5:05 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. local time. It would take about 90 minutes to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi. The next U.S.-chartered plane to make the trip left at 6:49 a.m., meaning it could have arrived shortly before 9 a.m., nearly four hours after the second, 11-minute battle at the CIA facility ended at about 5:25 a.m.

The decision was made to stand down before anyone could have known the fight was over. This is Monday Morning Quarterbacking. At the time that the order was given Ambassador Stevens had not been located. Stevens wasn't located until his body was delivered to the airport hours later. So, in perspective, the order not to go in was made while the Ambassador was still missing and before anyone could possibly know the attacks wouldn't continue.
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I'm still mystified why you want to question an order that turned out to be the correct one. I understand why the military in the AAR might address that decision, but why it's part of any political discussion undermines any other legitimate point. It was the correct decision.

it would be like this:

Drunk at bar on Monday: That third and 14 call on the last drive in the 4th quarter was stooopid! We need to fire that OC.
Other Guy: But they gained 16, got a first down, and went on to score....
Drunk: Right, that was a dumb call and the OC needs to be FIRED!

And of course, there is the little problem that the Mission came under attack hours earlier, hours after Steven sent a message to State warning of security problems in Benghazi, and after a month of asking for more security.

Also, the stand down orders have many sources, here is a Washington Times article about the hold up at the Annex that some soldiers saw as a stand down order.
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OK, that's different than the original one, and it's less clear. Should they have sent the teams immediately? Perhaps, but I saw nothing there where Hillary was on the phone with CIA people making decisions during an attack telling them what to do and what not to do.

In the end, when you take all of the information into account, the problem was that the piss poor security offered by the State Department of the Annex and Mission left the US security forces in an untenable position of having to bargain with local Libyan Militias for sufficient firepower to defend the Mission, and later defend the Annex because the US State Department didn't see a need to give military hardware and heavy weapons to security teams in a war zone.
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It's a fair and obvious point that the security was inadequate. Investigating WHY is clearly appropriate, but you know as well as I do that this isn't an investigation into an event to learn and prevent future attacks, but to tar Obama and Hillary with all the blame. And we know this because there have been dozens of attacks on U.S. facilities, and hundreds of battles overseas where more security or a better immediate response would have saved U.S. lives, and we just don't care about them.

And even with all we know now, with perfect hindsight, what is clear is people in charge of making security decisions made mistakes that turned out to be fatal. But that's the nature of those decisions. They had limited resources and so had to use their best judgment to allocate them. They failed, but I don't get why failure is a political scandal in this case, and only in this case.

So feel free to make the semantic argument of whether the exact words "stand down" were made to willing rescuers in Tripoli, or Italy, or the Benghazi annex, but in the end it's the same Charlie Foxtrot by another name.
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I don't care about the semantics. I've argued the decisions on the merits, not what we call them. If you want to argue that the team in Tripoli SHOULD have been sent, only to pass the plane carrying wounded in the air from Benghazi on their way to Tripoli, make that argument.
 
jmotivator said:
From the AP article, key quote:

1- The order was to remain in Tripoli and protect some three dozen embassy personnel rather than fly to Benghazi some 600 miles away after all Americans there would have been evacuated

.
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So your opinion is that the Embassy should have been left to fall? Leave "some three dozen" people to fend for themselves to rescue the 4 people in Benghazi?

There were also protests in Tripoli that night. So it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that if the Embassy were left unguarded, that would have much worse consequences. Maybe that was the original plan - draw the Marine forces over to Benghazi so they could attack the Embassy in Tripoli.

Of course, we don't know. But your contention here is that the Embassy should have been left unguarded to go on a rescue mission, and hope to Hell nothing happened to the Embassy in the meantime?
 
NIMBY said:
GOP ConservaTEAs have been singing "4 dead in Ben--gha--zi" since that terrible day. What short memories these "mission accomplished" folks have of 9/11 and the disastrous CHOICE to destabilize Iraq. Everyday 22 more Iraqi Veterans commit suicide and "silence of the lambs" .
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This cannot be repeated enough. Conservatives' silence about Bush and Iraq is deafening.
 
Phys251 said:
This cannot be repeated enough. Conservatives' silence about Bush and Iraq is deafening.
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Repeat it all you want, it's still a BS false narrative drummed up by the Democrats.

The same Democrats that admitted that Saddam Hussein hsd WMD years before.

Its also irrelevant to the Benghazi issue.
 
Phys251 said:
This cannot be repeated enough. Conservatives' silence about Bush and Iraq is deafening.
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A possibility for that silence might be that the thread topic is "APNewsBreak: No 'Stand Down' Order in Benghazi".
 
Hatuey said:
Lmao... Thrilla defending an Issa investigation that got nowhere.

what_are_the_odds.jpg


Well, on to the next politically motivated investigation meant to clear Obama of any wrong doing. Useful idiot that Issa is.
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I love govt. investigations... I don't care who runs em'...

I remember when Democrats used to like investigations too... but that was before Obama came along... they hate investigations now.
 
Fenton said:
Why did the Red Cross and every other Nation bail out of Benghazi prior to the attack ?

Were their intelligence agencies running guns too ?

Or did they tie the rising threat of a terrorist to our suppposed CIAs activities ?

Was the prior attack that blew a 12 foot hole in the compounds wall a message to our CIA ?

We were not the only Nation in Benghazi, just the only one with a administration incompetent enough to stay put.
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Not quite sure what point you were driving at there Fenton.
 
Grant said:
It certainly relates to the disdain Barrack Obama has for the US Military, their careers, and their lives.
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And it has nothing to do with the fact that there was no stand down order. Stick to the topic, Grant. :)
 
Morality Games said:
Blaming your political opposition for something is what it means to 'politicize' something.
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That's nonsense. With that definition everything becomes 'political' and the truth will never emerge. There are times when criticism is unwarranted and is genuinely political, like the silly 'war on women', but reasonably educated people should be able to tell the difference.
 
Hatuey said:
And it has nothing to do with the fact that there was no stand down order. Stick to the topic, Grant. :)
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It is clear this neglect of the military follows a pattern of behavior by the Obama Administration. Celebrating the release of an AWOL soldier while releasing terrorist leaders, and ignoring genuine heroes, is another.
 
Grant said:
It is clear this neglect of the military follows a pattern of behavior by the Obama Administration. Celebrating the release of an AWOL soldier while releasing terrorist leaders, and ignoring genuine heroes, is another.
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This has nothing to do with a stand down order, Grant. You're being purposely off topic after complaining that others were off topic. May I suggest you discuss the stand down order?
 
Hatuey said:
This has nothing to do with a stand down order, Grant. You're being purposely off topic after complaining that others were off topic. May I suggest you discuss the stand down order?
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Oh, c'mon, Hatuey~! You know and I know that you don't want this serial dereliction by the Commander In Chief to be discussed, not that it's 'off topic'. If you were sincere you would have commented on the 'off topic' comments on the very first page.

It is absolutely on topic because it is a continuation of his disdain for the American military and the safety of American public.
 
Grant said:
Oh
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Grant, getting back to the topic, do you feel the soldiers who contradicted the right wing's narrative about a stand down order are traitors? I mean after all, the thread is about the fact that there was no stand down order.
 
Grant said:
It is clear this neglect of the military follows a pattern of behavior by the Obama Administration. Celebrating the release of an AWOL soldier while releasing terrorist leaders, and ignoring genuine heroes, is another.
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Has this guy paid any attention to the military budget during president Obama's administration? Or is he just a razorback partisan foreigner that doesn't know whether the US constitution has a due process clause, or a kill clause for the dude with a different opinion?
 
Grant said:
Oh, c'mon, Hatuey~! You know and I know that you don't want this serial dereliction by the Commander In Chief to be discussed, not that it's 'off topic'. If you were sincere you would have commented on the 'off topic' comments on the very first page.

It is absolutely on topic because it is a continuation of his disdain for the American military and the safety of American public.
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Sounds like the same thing Cry babies said about Mr. Clinton. Poor thing you.
 
I'm glad to hear no order to stand down was given. But that does little to exonerate the lack of security that was present in the first place.
 
Hatuey said:
Grant, getting back to the topic, do you feel the soldiers who contradicted the right wing's narrative about a stand down order are traitors? I mean after all, the thread is about the fact that there was no stand down order.
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Why not deal with that right winger from post #5 first?
 
JasperL said:
According to testimony that was made available months ago, there were many operational reasons why it made no sense to fly that team from Tripoli to Benghazi. The short version was if the team had boarded a plane to fly to help, they'd have passed in flight the first plane carrying the wounded to Tripoli, where they would have just left, and would have arrived after the evacuation was complete, and all that was left was to get the remaining, uninjured personnel to where they needed to go, with staff on hand capable of getting that done, which they did. In other words, they wouldn't have helped much, if any, even with 20-20 hindsight, and were more needed right where they were, in Tripoli, to deal with the returning wounded and provide security to that base.

The whole "stand down order" so-called controversy was BS from the start. The only thing that's confusing today is why this is news. It wouldn't be if people read testimony already made available on that decision. And even if the order turned out to be wrong in real time, why is that a controversy, unless people in charge in the military of making those decisions received orders from the WH to let them die or something, which no one has suggested, alleged, provided any proof of, etc. It's understandable that if people made bad decisions that in inquiry into why, in order to learn and make better decisions later, would be entirely appropriate, but that's not a scandal. That's people looking into a decision as a learning exercise.
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It wasnt BS. Its CONFIRMED in the op.
 
jonny5 said:
It wasnt BS. Its CONFIRMED in the op.
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What was confirmed? That the team was ordered through normal chain of command to remain in Tripoli instead of take a round trip plane ride to Benghazi where they would be of no help? Yes, that was confirmed. So why is this still a controversy? If they'd have got what they wanted, they'd have passed the first plane of injured being flown to Tripoli where they just left, then stood around the airport in Benghazi, watching more planes get loaded with evacuees, which was handled just fine without them.

So the military made a correct decision to leave them in Tripoli. What's the issue?
 
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