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Saturday, October 27, 2012

More of the Benghazi Puzzle

Kevin, over that the Smallest Minority, has an excellent article, which, in turn, comes from TigerDroppings.com.
I heard a story today from someone inside the military that I trust entirely. The story was in reference to General Ham that Panetta referenced in the quote below.
quote:
"(The) basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," Panetta told Pentagon reporters. "And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation."
The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to (say) screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The story continues that now General Rodriguez would take General Ham's place as the head of Africon.
And that story appears in Stars and Stripes.  The net is overflowing with the story that Gen. Ham was fired for disobeying the "stand down" order and trying to mount a rescue mission. Blackfive.net is reporting that it's highly likely that an AC-130 was available to attack the forces who pinned down and eventually killed former SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty as they tried to rescue the others themselves. The author writes:
If that SEAL was actively "painting" a target; something was on station to engage!  And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!
As I posted before, the Washington Times has run an article on the apparent gun running involving our CIA, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.  This has been expanded on by Counter Jihad Report, who has been picked up by Oathkeepers.   In a piece I wrote in March of 2011, "Arm Them Today, Fight Them Tomorrow", (I can't claim clairvoyance over that) I pointed to a story in the Telegraph that quoted a Libyan "Resistance Leader" saying his fighters had been fighting us in Iraq and Afghanistan before coming over to Libya, and we were arming them.  So it certainly appears that we were running guns to Al Qaeda in Libya in '11, who is now using them in Syria to topple President Assad.  And, of course, there's the small matter of the 20,000 or so portable anti-aircraft missiles that are missing from Libya and probably in Al Qaeda's hands by now.

What's this supposed to be?  Fast and Furious - Mideast franchise?

So if the possible rescue groups were ordered to stand down, there's only one reasonable conclusion: Stevens was meant to face whatever he was facing alone.  Was he being sacrificed?  Either they planned for him to be murdered, or as someone has suggested, to be used in hostage negotiations.  The administration is apparently trying to get the Blind Sheik released as a gift to the Muslim Brotherhood (I single them out because they have been adamant about wanting him back); swapping Stevens for the Sheik would have given a cover story to the White House.  (The Blind Sheik, of course, was the one convicted of the 1993 WTC bombing).

Perhaps the plan was to get Stevens kidnapped, and either the Ansar al-Sharia guys couldn't contain themselves and killed him for fun, or perhaps Woods and Doherty, who themselves defied orders to stand down and went to rescue Stevens and Smith, messed up the operation enough that Ansar Al-Sharia couldn't execute their deal with the administration and all four of them were accidentally killed. We can only hope we find out the details, but it won't be by the election - you can take that to the bank!


EDIT 10-28@1200 EDT  Bayou Renaissance Man offers a trail of evidence that apparently contradicts the start of this article, the reassignment/removal of Gen. Ham.  In the fog that accompanies a breaking news story, some wrong "facts" are always reported.  It's why I rarely watch breaking news stories on the TV: you know the facts are going to change. 

The second part of this piece, from the reference to the Washington Times article on gun-running to my speculations on what really happened doesn't depend on the first part, and I leave this here unedited for that reason.  From your standpoint, I assume, I'm just a random Internet Idiot with a blog.  When I print things that aren't my speculation, I link to sources where I got them so that you may decide whether or not they're valid sources. 


4 comments:

  1. #1
    As far as the "conspiracy theory" aspects of the General Ham rumor: while it is certainly possible that the rumor is wrong, the reasoning provided by BRM is just as likely to be wrong. Just as we saw with Justice Roberts changing his tune on Obamacare, Ham could easily have been coerced into standing down by threats to his career, to his family, or to his troops if Jarrett or Obama himself intervened and "convinced" him to shut up and pretend it never happened.

    It shouldn't be that hard to believe that there are still one or two general officers who are willing to do the right thing. Knowing how the Chicago machine likes to play hardball, though, I have no trouble believing Ham was relieved of command until Stevens and the others were confirmed dead, and then convinced it was in everyone's "best" interests to pretend it never happened.

    BRM is a smart individual, and is certainly better informed than I am, but I am not convinced he has any better access to what _really_ took place than the rest of us. I contend it could have gone either way, and I would certainly like to believe that someone in command had the balls to at least TRY to come to the aid of the men who _refused_ to stand down, not at the cost of their careers or even their families, but at the cost of their lives. And they died waiting for help that never came

    #2
    I know Ann Barnhardt _sounds_ over-the-top at times, but she supports the gun-running story as well:

    "Let's quit the chickenshit dancing around here.

    The Obama regime has been running guns and BIGTIME armaments and munitions, including MANPADS, which are shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down commercial jetliners [disclaimer here: they could be used that way, but probably weren't actually designed for that. RegT], to the Muslim Brotherhood. This is just Fast-and-Furious except that the people being armed are musloids tasked with reforming the Islamic Caliphate instead of the drug cartels. But it is exactly the same thing. Ghadaffi was overthrown because the Obama regime wanted to use a chaotic, destabilized "wild west" Libya as the doorway to the Caliphate to get the arms in for distribution to Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and eventually Saudi Arabia. Egypt would have been too risky.

    Ambassador Chris Stevens and the CIA were somehow, some way running or heavily involved this armament pipeline."

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    1. Well said. I have to acknowledge that Ham appears to still be in his command, but having "Eyebrows" Panetta say nice things about him, and the photo, are just about meaningless. We won't know until this is sorted out. Another reason I left the post up; I'm gathering info for myself and the sources seem to be real guys. "We report, you decide" as they say ;-)

      As for the gun running, I'm pretty sure that was going on. The evidence seems strong. We have the story from over a year ago during the Libya campaign. If you use your favorite search engine and search for "20,000 manpads" or "missing manpads", you'll find stories that the Fed.gov has hired contractors to go look for them. We know Benghazi was a CIA station, not an embassy - which is Tripoli. The two dead agents sound like the kinds of guys who would be trying to clean up a mess left after the politicos have done their part, not like your routine embassy guards.

      And as for Ann, I respect her tremendously. Gutsy, smart, tough, and knows the financial biz like I wish I did.

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  2. We know by their own admission this admin was providing support to the libyan "rebels". Based on prior actions seems likely that 2 or more objectives were to be accomplished here - remove a leak, give an anniversary gift to AQ - possibly as hostage, and what else? Perhaps additional destabilazation of the area in the mind of the lamestream media and viewers?



    itor

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  3. If there wasn't an Al Qaeda to fight Obama would invent one to denounce and demagogue, it's just another of his many convenient straw-men. Liberals (and dictators) gain and hold power based on tumultuous events they often prompt, and depend on the fears of Everyman who needs a savior, and that includes all the Mexicans who died in Fast&Furious.

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