Archive for the 'Leon Panetta' Category

We know many things about the attack at Benghazi, much more than the administration wishes we did.  First of all, my military readers knew within 24 hours that this was the result of a well-planned, well-coordinated combined-arms attack with the use of crew served weapons (e.g., see DirtyMick’s comments), not the result of some ridiculous YouTube video.

We also know that weapons were being moved through Libya to Syrian insurgents, those whom we now know as ISIS.  We know that this was illegal, immoral and ill-advised, and was being funded by the U.S. government.  I also said three years ago that I didn’t believe administration claims that no assets were available for response to the battle.

Finally, I completely disemboweled the administration’s excuse that we don’t deploy troops into battle without good, real-time intelligence.  We do that all of the time.  Nothing this administration has said has been honest.  Now we come to find out, due to the hard work of Judicial Watch, that I was right.

Judicial Watch today released a new Benghazi email from then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information.

Bash’s email seems to directly contradict testimony given by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2013. Defending the Obama administration’s lack of military response to the nearly six-hour-long attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Panetta claimed that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

The first assault occurred at the main compound at about 9:40 pm local time – 3:40 p.m. ET in Washington, DC.  The second attack on a CIA annex 1.2 miles away began three hours later, at about 12 am local time the following morning – 6 p.m. ET.

Leon Panetta knows more than he has said, and what he has said has been primarily prevarication and obfuscation.  The same is true of David Petraeus, and General Ham, who knows things very important for us to know, hasn’t spoken on this.  We will all find out what assets were available, who told them to stand down, and who chose to leave good men to perish in Libya that fateful night.

We will know the truth one day.  All of it.  God knows it now, and He will hold you accountable, whether I am in a position to do that or not.

Finally, I am willing to bet that everything I say and have said about Benghazi will be proven accurate and correct.  I have said “As to what I suspect – but cannot yet prove – the movement of weapons to terrorists was becoming hard to hide, and the whole operation had ripened to the point of rottenness.  Stevens had to be moved out and told to shut up about what he knew.  Even if the administration didn’t plan the military operation to take down the consulate at Benghazi, they nevertheless used it to hide their tracks.”

Somebody prove me wrong.

Well, I never agreed with his advocacy for troops cutbacks, I don’t like his positions on Iraq or Afghanistan, and I couldn’t have gotten along with Mr. Obama long enough to have every been in his shoes.  But this time Panetta has really jumped off the deep end.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared global warming a national security threat yesterday during a speech before an environmentalist group in Washington, D.C.

“The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security,” Panetta told the Environmental Defense Fund last night. “Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.”

I had been wondering about Panetta’s position on the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, or the F-22 versus the (what will be ill-fated) F-35, maintaining the same number of carrier groups in the future (which I support – actually, I support increasing the number), and so on.

Instead, we find out that his thoughts as Secretary of Defense are running to anthropogenic global warming and the soon-to-be-manifest disasters.  Sigh.  It’s sort of like finding out that that man down the street with whom you talk from time to time believes that the U.S. destroyed the world trade center, right after aliens kidnapped him and held him hostage for ten years on the planet Lazon II.