Yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and put on quite the show. She cried, she yelled, and like the good Democrat Party sycophant that she is, she blamed the Republicans for the outcome of the attack that night. Yes, Hillary Clinton complained it was the lack of money from the Republicans in the House of Representatives which led to there not being enough security at that consulate. A masterful performance by an actress all too well schooled on public deception and politics. Unfortunately she was dead wrong in her assessment and dead wrong to blame anyone other than herself, the military leaders in charge and her boss.
CNN has published a timeline of the events in Benghazi which it received from the Pentagon. CNN Report It clearly shows there were two separate attacks carried out hours apart from each other on the complex. Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith were killed in the initial attack. Those deaths are tragic. They were probably preventable if someone, anyone, in charge had been listening and paying attention in the weeks leading up to the incident. Yet, they were the result of an attack which was not anticipated at the time it occurred, and can be explained in that context. Ignorance and complacency, in my opinion, were the main cause of their deaths. Not so the deaths of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. There are no excuses for their demise.
My premise is based on a few undisputed facts. First, our military leaders knew there was a full scale military assault on the consulate within fifteen minutes of its start at 9:42 pm. They knew RPG's and Mortars were being used. They knew automatic weapons were also being used. By 11:30 pm, they knew the attack was over and that two diplomats were dead. They spent precious time between the first attack and the second assault at 5:30 am telling special teams in Spain and Croatia to "prepare" to move, in case of a second attack. (More evidence they knew this was a military action and not a protest.) It was not until 1:30 am, four hours after the first shots, when six security people arrived from the embassy in Tripoli. It is less than an hour by air. (Only diplomats would think six people could defend them in that scenario.) Sometime after the second attack began, Woods and Doherty were killed while defending the second building. Reports are contradictory as to whether they survived for minutes or for hours. Either way, their deaths were preventable and someone should be held accountable. Unfortunately, the current media is more interested in things like the size of Snooki's baby than the details of a botched operation in Libya. I say botched because that is what happened. People, like Clinton, and Pinetta, and even the President, were so busy pontificating over what to do, they ended up doing nothing and more lives were lost.
Think about this. I just looked on the Internet and learned there are at least three NATO countries within a two hour commercial flight of Benghazi. These include Italy, Turkey and Greece. In addition, we had carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean. How is it possible we had no military assets to respond to the scene sooner than 5am when the second attack started? It isn't folks. There are dozens of bases within range and plenty of allied soldiers who could have responded, if asked to do so in the first place. This was a failure of leadership from the President on down and it is not an ideological argument. It is an argument borne of having served in the military and seeing first hand our capabilities. Not even one fighter plane could be dispatched? Not one? Didn't we just help these same attackers with fighters? How can this narrative even be true? More importantly, why is it no one in the so called main stream media, or our leaders in congress, are asking those same questions? Why are people getting a pass on this?
Woods and Doherty died most likely believing help was on the way. What a shameful black mark on our country for letting that happen. As for Hillary Clinton and her theatrics, I hope they have the same effect as Dr. Dean's scream, and put her off the stage once and for all.
