Benghazi and the Missing Obama 9/11 Timeline
The story of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi has been evolving for more than seven weeks now, in its many and oft conflicting variants, and the questions keep multiplying. Amid the official obfuscations and evasions, a patchwork picture has been emerging, by way of congressional questions, leaked emails, anonymous sources and documents discovered as recently as this week by reporters wandering through the still-unsecured, burned and looted diplomatic compound where Ambassador Chris Stevens apparently spent his final moments of consciousness choking on the smoke of a diesel-fueled conflagration.
Among the vital tools for clarifying what actually happened are the timelines, which are only slowly being filled in. Broadly, these stretch back months before the assault, as American personnel in Libya warned about deteriorating security, and a U.S. administration invested in the tale of al Qaeda-in-retreat, success in Libya, and a receding tide of war, chose to ignore the warnings. The timelines stretch forward as well, encompassing confusing and conflicting accounts put forth by various officials of the administration; the Sept. 16 televised blame-the-video-and-the-spontaneous-mob messages of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, and the Sept. 25 denounce-the-video speech of President Obama at the UN; the reported inability of the FBI to reach the Benghazi sites until more than three weeks after the attack; the continuing controversy about reported calls for help and the alleged orders to stand down. The list goes on.
But of special interest, in getting a handle on the truth, are the timelines for the duration of the attack itself. There are at least two provided by the administration at this stage. One comes from the State Department, outlined in a teleconference background press briefing on Oct. 9. The other was provided this past Thursday by the CIA. They don’t quite match up. Both versions agree that the assault on the main diplomatic compound began at 9:40 PM Benghazi time, and that a rescue squad came from the annex about a mile away, was unable to find the ambassador, retrieved the body of diplomatic aide Sean Smith, and then returned, under fire, to the annex — which itself came under attack, and where, in the early morning hours, former SEALS Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed by a mortar strike.
But when the rescue squad returns to the annex that deadly night, accounts diverge. According to the State Department briefer, the attack on the annex continued, at least sporadically, for hours — from the time the rescue team returned, until the time the two agents were killed. The wording in the State Department Oct. 9 transcript , referring to the time the rescue team arrived back at the annex, is: “The annex is at this time also taking fire and does take fire intermittently, on and off, for the next several hours. The fire consists of AK-47s, but also RPGs, and it’s, at times, quite intense.”
The CIA version, as reported Nov. 1, by David Ignatius in the Washington Post, is different. According to the CIA, the attacks on the annex “stop at 1:01 A.M., and some assume the fight is over.” Then, more than four hours later, at 5:15 AM, “A new Libyan assault begins, this time with mortars.” That’s the attack in which Woods and Doherty are killed. It stops just 11 minutes later. At 6 AM, a large Libyan security escort finally shows up, takes the Americans to the airport, where some of them, including the wounded, fly out at 7 AM, and the rest depart at 10 AM, with the bodies of the four murdered Americans.
Plenty remains to be filled in and reconciled between these overlapping timelines. But the glaring omission to date is the timeline back in Washington for the commander-in-chief, the president himself. The critical interval in Benghazi spanned just over 12 hours, from the time the attack began, at 9:40 PM on Sept. 11, until the last contingent of Americans flew out, at 10 AM the next day, Benghazi is in a time zone six hours ahead of Washington. So, in Washington, that critical 12-hour interval ran from 3:40 PM, Sept. 11, until about 4 AM, Sept. 12.
What was the president doing during those 12 hours? The official White House schedule for Sept. 11 tells us he had been to a memorial service at the Pentagon that morning, then visited the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at 2:15 PM, returning at 4:50 PM to the White House for a previously scheduled meeting at 5:00 PM with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The White House has said that Obama was informed at about 5 PM of the attack in Benghazi. Did no one on his staff try to inform him sooner? By then, the diplomatic post had already been under attack for well over an hour. It was 11 PM in Benghazi, where a rescue squad from the annex had arrived at the burning diplomatic compound and was trying, without success, to reach Ambassador Stevens amid the intense fire and smoke.
The White House schedule for that week shows nothing for the president after that 5 PM meeting on Sept. 11, at which time he reportedly got word of the attack. The next item for the president, as now recorded in the White House schedule, was his appearance at 10:35 the next morning, Sept. 12, when he delivered a statement in the Rose Garden, deploring the deaths of the four Americans, while implying that some sort of deliberate third-party offense (the video) had provoked the attack (“While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others…”).
Between 5 PM, when the president was informed of the attack, and 10:35 AM, when Obama delivered that public statement, there was an interval of more than 17 hours. When was he directly following the events in Benghazi, complete with the claim and appearance of the heavily armed terrorists of Ansar al-Sharia? When did he go to sleep? When was he informed of the death of the ambassador? During the first six-and-a-half of those hours, from 5 PM until about 11:30 PM Washington time, the American personnel on the ground in Benghazi were either under attack (intermittent, and at times intense, for hours, if you believe the State Department; or with a pause of about four hours — though with nothing definitively resolved, and the ambassador presumed dead but not yet back in American hands — if you believe the CIA). And during the first 11 of those hours, until 4 AM Washington time, there were still Americans, in peril, on the ground in Benghazi.
What was the president doing during those many hours? There are various accounts now circulating of what his staff did, or perhaps did not do. But for the president himself, there’s a big blank. The White House, which has released photos of Obama monitoring everything from the raid on Osama bin Laden to the natural disaster of Hurricane Sandy, has released no photos of Obama at his post on the evening of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi.
In an interview weeks later, on Oct 27, with a Colorado TV reporter who pressed questions about Benghazi, Obama said, “The minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives.” These directives, he said, were to investigate what happened, to bring the perpetrators to justice, and — presumably the most urgent while the battle itself was still underway — “make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.” But that was about all he was willing to say.
Obama’s immediate dispensing of a directive (though, as Bing West has noted, we have yet to see any documentary evidence of it) accounts for the time just after 5 PM. What did Obama do for the rest of that evening, as Libyans found a dying ambassador in the ravaged diplomatic compound, and took him to a Benghazi hospital; as the outgunned Americans in Benghazi took up defensive positions at the annex?
By the CIA account, CIA reinforcements flew in on a hastily chartered plane from Tripoli, arriving at 1:15 AM at the Benghazi airport, but were then delayed till 4:30 AM– for more than three hours — over logistical problems that included having to negotiate with Libyan authorities for permission to leave the airport. The corresponding time in Washington was 7:15 – 10:30 PM. Given the urgency of the moment, including the torched diplomatic compound, the assault on the annex and the missing ambassador, was this not perhaps an interlude in which direct intervention by the president of the United States, perhaps a phone call to the right official in Libya, might have hastened things along? For that matter, wasn’t this a period during which greater firepower could have been dispatched to Benghazi from U.S. bases outside the country?
As it turned out, when the reinforcements finally got past the airport, they were unable to retrieve the body of Ambassador Stevens from the hospital, because, according to the CIA, the hospital was surrounded by the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia terrorists who — as the State Department informed the White House in an email sent at 6:07 PM that evening — had already taken credit, on Facebook, for the attack. Was the president, whose envoy had disappeared in a fiery battle in Benghazi, not available to follow these developments while they were playing out? For that matter, did no one brief him on it before his UN ambassador went on the TV talk shows five days later to blame the assault on a spontaneous mob enraged by a video?
And, as we now know, just before 11:30 PM (CIA timeline), Washington time, one of the CIA reinforcements, Glen Doherty, was killed, along with Woods, at the Benghazi annex. Following that strike, the survivors, with the bodies of three of the four American dead, then waited for another half hour before friendly Libyan forces finally arrived, in strength — midnight, Washington time — to escort them to the airport. If it now seems safe to record, with hindsight, that the attack stopped after that lethal bombardment, did anyone have reason to be sure at the time that it was really over?
Where exactly was President Obama during those seven hours, 5 PM till midnight in Washington, on Sept. 11? He had no further appointments scheduled. He has released no pictures, provided no specifics. Was he in the situation room throughout? After the 5 PM directive, was he there at all? There are many questions about what orders did or did not issue from the White House, and who gave them, or didn’t, during the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack. But they all lead back to the president. He’s the commander-in-chief, as he reminded the country on Thursday, while campaigning in his Air Force One bomber jacket.
On a normal evening, there may be no call for the American public to know exactly what their president does with his time. But this was no normal evening. This was a terrorist attack, on the anniversary of Sept. 11, in which an al Qaeda affiliate, claiming credit, was so visible on the ground as to deter CIA agents from approaching a hospital to retrieve the body of the first American ambassador to be murdered since the administration of President Jimmy Carter.
All we have of the timeline for Obama himself during these events is that he met with the secretary of Defense and a number of other senior officials at 5 PM, Sept. 11. He gave a somewhat odd statement in the Rose Garden at 10:35 the next morning. He then dropped by the State Department. And at 2:05 he left the White House for a campaign trip to Las Vegas. When do we see the rest of the President Obama 9/11 timeline?
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Addendum: We have another data point, one I’d missed. The Weekly Standard’s editor, William Kristol, just sent me an item on “Obama’s Sept. 11 Phone Call” — a phone call, lasting a full hour, that Obama placed that same evening, Sept. 11, to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What did they talk about? The White House hustled out a short readout that same evening, noting that the two leaders had discussed Iran’s nuclear program, and “agreed to continue their close consultations going forward.” All well and good, Iran is a terrible threat. But what was so urgent that Obama placed the call, and spent a full hour on it, during that fraught evening? Well, stories had been popping up all day, until at least as late as this Reuters account, filed at 7:18 PM Washington time, that Obama had snubbed Netanyahu by refusing a request to meet with him at the UN General Assembly in New York later that month. This was not good for the Obama presidential campaign, and it might reasonably be asked, given the final line of the brief White House press release, if Obama was chiefly trying to stem the damage to himself: “Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor was a request for a meeting ever denied.”
What time did this hour long phone call take place? There’s no time stamp on the White House press release, but we can deduce it was relatively early in the evening, while the crisis was still unfolding in Benghazi. Reporter Lynn Sweet, of the Chicago Sun Times, filed a story about the phone call, that same evening, posted at 8:18 PM. Assuming that was 8:18 PM Central Time, thus 9:18 PM Eastern, and factoring in a mere half hour or so for the White House to produce the press release and Sweet to crash out a story, that means the phone call ended by 8:45 PM Washington time, at the latest. Because Obama was coming from the 5 PM meeting with Panetta, that means Obama began the hour long phone call sometime after 5 PM and before 7:45 PM. In Benghazi, that corresponded to 11-ish PM – 1:45 PM, the span in which the flaming main compound was abandoned under fire, the annex had come under attack, Obama’s ambassador was missing, and the reinforcements from Tripoli had run into delays at the Benghazi airport. (Israel, by the way, is seven hours ahead of Washington, so Netanyahu got that lengthy phone call from Obama sometime between midnight- 2:45 AM Israeli time.)
All of which leads to yet more questions, related to the Obama 9/11 timeline. Other than the attempt to defuse stories in the press about a snub (from the same president who outside campaign season had not only snubbed Netanyahu in person at the White House, but insulted him over an open microphone in France) was there anything discussed in that phone call that was so desperately urgent it couldn’t have waited until the white hot crisis in Benghazi was resolved? What time, exactly, did the president place that call?
Beautiful. Thanks Claudia.
@BarackObama You say you gave a directive to secure our personnel in #Benghazi? #GetTheTranscript.
Soon even the media will not be able to spin their BS
Did the Sun Times get played by Patrick Fitzgerald?
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/11/03/did-the-sun-times-get-played-by-patrick-fitzgerald/
If Obama loses this election, it will be interesting to see whether the press continues to protect his lame-duck ass. Survey says — YES.
Well, the media will have a lot of explaining to do, when the rest of the crap hits the fan, regardless of the outcome of the election.
The drip drip cannot be contained – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/11/05/bengazigate-house-of-cards-poised-to-crash-down-obama-regime-in-its-cross-hairs-addendum-to-bengazigate-mysteries-meandering-into-shia-iranian-territory-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
This may be of interest too, and it relates to Benghazigate, as much as it does to the POTUS’s jaw-jaw with the Iranian Hitler. The ‘October Surprise’too – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/11/04/update-debkafile-intelligence-the-treacherous-potus-his-october-surprise-via-the-iranian-hitlerite-regime-his-jaw-jaw-addendum-to-more-bengazigate-mysteries-commentary-by-adi/
The ultimate western betrayal.
Judge Jeanine on FNC now! Col. Hunt says this:
We have been at war for 11 years. What we do know how to do its respond to a fire-fight. We have F-16′s that can respond to a firefight in 25 minutes. They were never called in!
The fix was always in. The terror types were in cahoots with the regime. They had been getting weapons from Stevens and using them in Libya and Syria.zero had let them smuggle drugs in trade for not attacking the U.S. He wanted to use them one more time to get them to take Stevens hostage so he could rescue him and have something to chat about at the debate.
That’s why no one gave the four any help. They thought the attackers were their guys.NO telling how far this stuff went probably Hillary Panetta and Petraeus at the very least. the terror types were tired of being used.
My impression is that the kidnapping failed due to the brave response of our seals. Obama and his cronies are cowards, so they naturally assumed that everyone at the embassy would behave like them and lie down and go quietly into custody when faced with the big scary jihadis. He made extra sure by prohibiting the embassy security from having bullets. How could they resist then? But 2 seals found a heavy machine gun and started fighting back. The jihadis had probably been promised no resistance, so they either felt betrayed or just flew into a rage and killed everyone. Obama was probably howling with rage as he watched the seals disobey his order to stand down and thus muck up his brilliant plan. A coward like Obama cannot fully understand the sort of courage possessed by those seals, so he couldn’t account for it in his scheming and the plan blew up.
Why do you believe such a wild conspiracy?
I’ve seen that the rhetorical flourish that Bengahazi was “Obama’s 9/11″ has been becoming popular. Why is the right being cursed with “Obama’s 9/11″ Truthers? Did we learn nothing from the fringe elements that still keep the original Truther movement alive?
“Why do you believe such a wild conspiracy?”
There’s a lot a guff floating around and one of the main reasons is that the people who know the answers aren’t sharing the information with the public. Those people would be the Secretary of State, the DCIA, and the President.
We all learned in childhood, that rumors begin and flourish when facts are absent. It’s human nature. People just have to fill in the blanks and make stuff up when facts aren’t there.
But that’s all the more reason for this administration to speak – provided it has the backbone.
Remaining grimly silent only makes conspiracy theories grow worse. And day by day, it also erodes whatever credibility might remain in this administration.
“There’s a lot a guff floating around and one of the main reasons is that the people who know the answers aren’t sharing the information with the public… Remaining grimly silent only makes conspiracy theories grow worse.”
The _administration_ is at fault for the worst of the conspiracy theories? Seriously? So the 9/11 Truthers were Bush’s fault? The Vince Foster murder conpiracists were Clinton’s fault?
Get real. Let’s allows for at least a small serving of personal responsibility here. The “new 9/11″ truthers are cut from the exact same cloth as the original truthers, and the ridiculous actions of each group are not to be blamed on the President then or the President now.
Because this isn’t the first lie, by any means. Fast and Furious, the drilling ban, Obamacare saving money, lie after lie after lie. We don’t trust any of you LIbErals any more.
It appears the the saferoom did its job, allowing the Amb. to survive the attack til help could arrive. But one wonders “why 8-hours of respirating equipment is not stored in the saferoom?” I mean we’re told he died of smoke inhalation, not gunshot or beheaded.
The other element of the kidnapping supposition is the ferocious surprise afforded by the arrival of Woods & Doherty. If there was a game afoot, those two weren’t informed. They were ordered not to interfere, twice. The type of resistance they represented was absolutely not supposed to be there. It totally disrupted the first wave attack. I’ve heard that cost them 60-70 jihadis. No wonder the attackers were so angry.
Woods and Doherty will go down in history as two of the bravest patriots our country has ever seen.Taking out 60 terrorists when the odds were 150/2 is hard to imagine.
I still think no help arrived even when they lazed the terror types for a possible air strike for one big reason. Col. Hunt last night on Judge Jeanine said “help was only 25 minutes away with F16′s that never came”. They never came because they were never called. The regime thought they were dealing with “their” bought and paid for terror types. The ones sent their to kidnap Stevens. Then they he would be rescued by our forces giving obama something to talk about in the debates.It was always all politics. Little else matters to the regime.
The plans were spoiled when the terror types got tired of being used. The rest is history.
Sorry, but the heavy machine gun was at the Annex, not the consulate. Woods and Doherty were from different contingents of response, according to time-lines I’ve read. If Ambassador Stevens was supposed to be kidnapped, the jihadis were not given the means to carry out that plan, because Stevens and Smith got to the safe room (which wasn’t very safe) and the jihadis couldn’t get in, which is why they fired the place.
If you’re going to subscribe to a conspiracy theory, it’s best not to scramble details that are easily verified.
Everything takes a back seat to his getting re-elected. It was more important that he make that call. This guy just really has no idea of the priorities of the rest of America. Completely tone-deaf.
This is like from the crime reality show 48 Hours (or Dog the Bounty Hunter) where all the perps and their pals have different stories.
Who is covering for who?
lester, it will indeed come down to who is covering for who, but the buck will stop at the Islamist-in-Chief’s door. NEVERTHELESS, it is important not to lose sight of the out-sized parts played by others, particularly Valerie Jarrett 2012/11/02/valerie-jarrett-her-mischief-making-capable-of-upending-western-civilization-the-unofficial-buck-startsstops-at-her-door-addendum-to-barack-hussein-obamas-hidden-hand-commentary-by-adinakutnicki
& Huma Abedin. Hill is front and center, but her ‘right hand woman’ is even more of a catch 2012/10/18/hillary-takes-the-fall-for-the-potus-in-bengazigate-but-there-is-a-silver-lining-shining-the-spotlight-on-huma-abedin-addendum-to-uncovering-the-tip-of-huma-abedins-spear-the-house-of-al-sa/by-adinakutnicki
The thing is, my well placed contacts (both in the U.S. and Israel)spoke about the above possibilities, in Libya and beyond, before Benghazigate unfolded. Of course, no one knew that these Americans would die, but these individuals pointed to the above referenced individuals, and the mischief making parts they play, in EVERY decision coming out of the Middle East. The rest of the indictment is extrapolated therein.
Obviously, when the crap is fully exposed there will be things no one had a clue about.
“What was the president doing during those 12 hours?”
More importantly, what’s he done during the next 52 days?
Nothing, that’s what.
Still no American response to the terror attack, and almost two months have passed.
Barack Obama WILL, in violation of the United States Constitution, launch airstrikes into Libya to support Muslim jihadists fighting to take control of the country, but when then the United States is attacked by some of his pet Libyan Muslims, and our citzens are killed…our military just sits there.
Barack Obama MUST go. He’s unfit to command, unfit even to be an American citizen, and his acts have been tantamount to out and out treason.
It’s beyond weird that no investigation was done of the destroyed consulate until 2 or 3 weeks after it happened — and that no effort to track down the actual killers was undertaken until this past week!
Obama — and probably some other people in the administration — should eventually be indicted for treason.
Certain types of high-priority messages addressed to “National Command Authority” require delivery to the principal in well under one hour. Four possibilities:
1. Personnel in Benghazi failed to send this type of message.
2. Message was sent and POTUS received word within required time frame.
Message was sent and an aide to Obama evaluated message content to determine whether it should be immediately forwarded to POTUS.
3. Message was delivered per that evaluation process.
Or
4. Message was NOT delivered per that evaluation process.
Hard to see another possibility. The only one that exonerates Administration is the first scenario. Don’t have specific data to address that.
It’s September 11th. Wouldn’t a normal FORWARD LEANING President schedule a meeting with the SecDef on Sept 10th or very early on the 11th to make sure all defenses are set — including cross-border authorization for a military response to any attack in any war torn nations? If you wanted to defend Americans and our territory, I think so. Maybe I’m wrong though and leadership just happens randomly at 5PM after looking back and leaning back all day.
So, interesting exquisite timing there for that 5PM non-emergency pre-planned total coincidence meeting, given what we know now about the advance warnings of attacks and the ready set YouTube nonsense. We wouldn’t want to convene a crisis response after an attack and then do nothing now would we? No, we need to already be in a meeting and then just head to bed like nothing happened.
I’m officially calling bullshit on the convenient scheduling of that 5PM “So Leon, how did those attacks go today?” meeting.
So we know that:
1) The enemy attacked US territory
2) The POTUS knew, yet did nothing to help the American people whose lives were at risk
3) There were many things he could have done to try and help
That means he assisted the enemy on the field of battle.
Still in dispute is whether or not he forbade any American from helping his fellow Americans. Still in dispute is his motives. No longer in dispute is whether or not it was the enemy who attacked. The Administrations earlier attempts to say it was a civilian mob, not an armed enemy attack, are no longer repeated. His motives are not really crucial. We can reasonably suspect that he did positively forbid Americans from helping other Americans. We can tell this because it is beyond belief that no one in the CIA or US Armed Forces did not request permission to help their fellow Americans. Of course they wanted to help. It is reasonable to suspect that only Obama did not want to help. His decisions were crucial. He decided to be passive. These conclusions are reasonable because we have a good idea of how the US government works. We know the POTUS is in charge. We know he is well-informed. Its been that way for decades. Harry Truman was right. The buck stops with the President.
What CIA timeline?
All I have read is what remains of a “timeline” after it has been filtered through a liberal mouthpiece (David Ignatius and the WP).
If the CIA is going to prepare a timeline – let’s see the whole thing (at least all that they can publicly release). I suggest that we all not give any respect to this filtered “release” and treat this as though all of the agencies have continued to remain silent. I do not trust any of the MSM to accurately “summarize” information for me.
Exactly. It’s no secret. It’s not as if the enemy doesn’t know the timeline in exquisite deatil, so who are we keeping the information from? US.
Just an outsider’s guess:
One potential reason for these delays and conflicting accounts and multiplying unanswered questions is all of the sidestepping and dancing around and grasping at straws of these myriad Administration people so desperately trying to save their careers and cover their own individual asses….. these are all coming into play at the same time, creating circular confusion….adding up to this absolute, stark tragedy.
We’re all being snookered, Dear Readers, right this minute. We can’t rely on our “government”, can’t rely on our news media.
A terrible narrative, or worse, theatrical novel. Literally unbelievable.
I must point out that it takes time to generate bogus evidence with the proper time stamps.
It appears plausible to me that everyone around the president has long been frustrated by his cavalier attitude in situations that required him to stay informed, alert, and ready to make critical decisions. It is even conceivable that he had refused to get involved much earlier in the planning of security policies and assets in dangerous places. The two individuals acting from their own initiative against orders from the chain of command are the two former seals who perished asking for air support, doing whatever the could to fight the invaders with stolen weapons and illuminate the Mortar station with a laser, thereby exposing themselves, trying to do their part in cooperation with the support that should have come, but never did.
I wonder what the frustrated high ranking officials could have done in spite of the authorizations that did not come from the top. It seems the man who thinks everything can be resolved through the diplomatic channels could not bring himself to use the more expeditious means at his disposal when the situation demanded it.
I don’t want to hear again about leading from behind and letting Iran get away with their stalling tactics in bogus negotiations. This fellow has been outwitted and outmaneuvered by Putin, the Ayatollahs, the Muslim brotherhood, the Reid & Pelosi consort and the UN, and failed his duties of faithfulness with our allies, who must be sharing the frustration of those in his immediate entourage.
The string-puller-in-chief is letting his own string being pulled, and neglecting the nation he solemnly promised to defend.
I believe that this story will follow a similar trajectory as the National Guard Memos of Dan Rather fame during the period before GWB’s re-election; but it will be orders of magnitude more damning. What EVERYONE agrees on is this: There was no “spontaneous” attack over an anti-islamic you-tube video. As far as I am concerned, that should be the first focus: Why was the adminstration or State Dept trying to pedal that false narrative to the American people and to the rest of the world? Everyone knows it’s a lie. Who ordered the lie? Find that out and the rest of the facts will burst out like puss from a festering boil.
It’s already well along that track. The Benghazi conspiracies have already largely been shown to be fanciful musings that turned out to be based on fictional information, just like the Bush National Guard memos.
However, I think this one will have a longer life, similar to the 9/11 truther movement, as the grandeur of the claims (the President intentionally killed Americans to further his election) will attract the usual conspiracy theory crowd, and all their remarkable persistence.
I direct your and Master Cranky Hucklebubble’s attention to the numerous photo ops with FEMA, etc over his sterling response to Sandy. If the administration had performed the correct actions in the correct order, would the Obamasiah cooked up an excuse? You tell me. If someone down chain had not followed orders, we would have noticed the rumble as the bus ran them over. Individual history is a good guide to future performance! There is not only smoke but there is surely fire there! Dance faster!
Ambassador Stevens had information on Obama that would make Sheriff Arpio look like a cartoon.
Because the video-as-excuse was the original plan. Mobs get overly boisterous and outraged over anti-Isam video and seize Stevens and entourage as hostages. To be paid exorbitant monies, or be exchanged for the blind sheik, or whatever their terms.
Hey Boss, the guards are un-armed. This op should be a piece of cake. Oops, Woods & Doherty appear from nowhere and spoil everything by killing/wounding scores of attackers. Now Boss is really p*ssed. Because his op has been foiled at great loss, and he doesn’t know if Stevens was rescued with the others, he brings in more forces to take revenge on the annex personnel.
The time the video was first mentioned is unusual. The Youtube video was first mentioned in an affronted tweet by a worker at the U.S. embassy in Cairo on the morning of the attack. It was used as an excuse for the mob in Cairo and and for the gathering mob in Benghazi. We remember this mention as Mitt Romney commented on it’s tone.
If the fiasco was a “preplanned” attack by elements our State Department, this is the kind of set up excuse they’d need and would stick with for almost 2 weeks.
Yackity yack, don’t look back. FORWARD, steady as she goes!!!!
That is a careful and informative article. Claudia Rosett is asking the right question “what was the President doing while the attack took place?” I don’t think the why matters because this requires speculation and theories; probably conspiracy theories. That simply helps Obama to wriggle like a maggot under a blanket of lies and evasion.
What was he doing? If he wasn’t doing his job then he failed his country and is unfit for the Presidency. Why he failed may be just a back story.
I loved the line from an article by Mark Steyn, so I added it as a caption to a photo of President Obama in a bomber jacket!
Caption is “All Jacket, No Bombers”
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/110212-632060-romney-ryan-will-at-least-try-to-fix-problems.htm?fromcampaign=1&p=full
–wonder when’s the last time NSA Donilon made a trip to the theater?
Claudia, you’re asking questions that I doubt will be answered for a long, long time.
On Oct. 27, Kyle Clark, a Denver TV reporter, asked Obama if the Americans under attack in Benghazi, Libya were “denied requests for assistance” during the attack. In other words, did someone say “no” to a request for rescue. The time for this denial would have been somewhere between 5pm Washington time and 9pm Washington time on September 11, 2012.
Of course, Obama didn’t answer Clark’s question.
Instead Obama talked about an “investigation to find out what happened”. Which means in ObamaTerms to find out information Obama doesn’t now possess.
What Obama knows logically isn’t part of the investigation. By definition, if Obama knows about something that happened relating to the attack on Benghazi, it’s not part of the investigation.
What bolsters this line of logic:
If you listened to Jay Carney yesterday, you heard Carney say Obama was staying out of the investigation. Catch the contradiction?
The investigation Obama talked about on Oct. 27 undoubtedly doesn’t include the actions of Obama and his inner circle. If it did, Obama would be talking to the investigators. Yet, he’s staying out of the investigation. Which make no sense. An investigation that doesn’t include Obama and his inner circle is no investigation. It’s a whitewash.
The message has been sent to our No Suit in Chief.
Latest Poll-
Top officials knew this was a coordinated act of terrorism, and then misled the public – Yes 88.69%
These are among a torrent of emails with conflicting intel,
so shouldn’t be taken at face value – Yes 4.12%
At the least, they show officials had reason to believe the attack could be terrorism – Yes 7.19%
Thank you for voting!
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Notice how they put the worst one in second place.
OATH OF OFFICE?
Fogetaboudit.
CONSTITUTION?
Who needs it.
Obama’s legacy will be to abandon anything and everything an American President can renounce, and manipulate the media and his “administration” to enable him to escape scrutiny and prosecution from any and all of their misdemeanors and high crimes.
It’s also known as Equal Opportunity, or preferential treatment for people of limited intelligence and lack of ethics.
The poor unfortunate soul had a bad childhood, don’t ya’ know? And look at the mess he was left with. He means well. That’s all the qualifications he needs to be Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on planet Earth.
Given the context of that evening, that phone call is strangely out of place.
(Unless Obama was trying to get IDF & Mossad resources dispatched, a la Entebe, but the fantasy of him doing that is a hoot.)
Therefore, I believe it is appropriate to demand that the WH produce proof that the call actually took place, that Obama was actually on the line for (roughly, at least) an hour with Netanyahu.
For all we know, he and Michelle had had floodlights set up on the lawn and were playing croquet until 2AM. Or did he leave the meeting with Panetta and trot down to some secret room in the basement to watch porn and “blow” the night away?
My point is that the utter absence of explanation suggests an activity for that evening which it would be politically embarrassing to reveal. My intuition says THIS is why we have been told nothing.
Claudia,
Great analytical work!
For me, and realizing this situation is not a John Wayne movie, I am buggered beyond belief that a team of heavily-armed men on a mission to save their comrades could be “delayed” for three hours, waiting for permission from Libyan officals and/or tranportation. I should think they could have gotten past the guards at the airport at gunpoint, especially if they were as competent/brave as the guards at our burning compound.
Avis? Hertz? Ahmed’s Storm Door and Car Rental?
How about seizing the initiative? Steal some vehicles, pay later.
The delay allround bothers me. It is difficult to game a realistic scenario where absolutely nothing goes right for the good guys. The critical delays and “standdowns” all add up to insuring the operation will be successful, according to the plan. No? Might well have been, excepting Woods & Dorherty.
Below is the last paragraph of an Oct 22 piece (yes, Gaffney has strong opinions)
that mentions a warehousing facility near the building where the ambassador’s body was found. This is the first I’d heard of such –i just read it today, the article being among URLs i’d saved for time to read ‘em.
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In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale. The effect has been to equip America’s enemies to wage jihad not only against regimes it once claimed were our friends, but inevitably against us and our allies as well. That would explain his administration’s desperate and now failing bid to mislead the voters through the serial deflections of Benghazigate.
Read more: GAFFNEY: The real reason behind Benghazigate – Washington Times http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/22/the-real-reason-behind-benghazigate/#.UIdhzDA7ZuQ.twitter#ixzz2BGIU7Zgi
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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at the risk of attracting denunciation by the General who knows the answers to all questions with enough surety to automatically assert as the counter argument the word “Ridiculous!” supported by analysis that boils down to ‘shut up, willya?’:
Admin re-election campaign needs a premise to base October Surprise and decides on the biggest foreign policy issue (domestic needs less light the better), an a-bomb deal with mullahs.
Mullahs increasingly desperate to save Assad.
Hillary and Donilon have long cooperative relationship on secret political initiatives (see deflection of all forms of oversight of Fannie until –what, reality intruded, or the Fan was ready for the Sh8t to Hit?).
Jarret and Donilon make private talks trips to theater.
Deal shapes up along the lines, Mullahs will cooperate with Nuke Program stand-down announcements and follow-on (pretense or not, to be determined, or not?), but they want the pressure on Assad stopped.
(the above could answer a few questions, such as, the topic of that hour-long phone call Obama initiated to Netanyahu (the Netanyahu govt stands alone as credible vouch of the mullah bomb stand-down), and why FBI did not visit the site for three weeks (takes time to clear & sanitize two large warehouses in a clandestine-enough manner, doable working at night with no western reporters around –which they won’t be if the place is too hot for the FBI).
Anyhoo, the attacking force was standing by waiting for the results of the ambassadorial meeting with the Turkish rep (the Turk may or may not have given any deliberate signal, any result he reported to Ankara could’ve tipped what the attack command was waiting to know –who had USA double-crossed, the mullahs or the Sauds, the Sunni or the Shia?
The attack force, said to be AQ, would indicate the Sauds/Sunni/anti-Assads/Turks had been double-crossed. However, insert ‘acting president’ Valerie Jarret, Hillary, Huma, and the Donilon plumbers, into the mix, and maybe the attack force was an Iranian false-flag, as several inside-baseball commenters (notably, Iranian dissidents such as the Shah’s son) assert.
Anything can be learned –including the truth about the financial crash and the truth about the Macondo blowout, if someone would merely threaten to waterboard a few of our office-holders. Someone in the Romney group just might do something like that –we’ll know if the command echelon of the Democrat party suddenly moves to Burkina Faso and sets up a fortress, come a week from now.
I’m heartened that Rosett is on this –i well recall how she singlehandedly went in harm’s way –literally –against the Oil-for-Food scandal, and singlehandedly set John Kerry, Richard Holbrooke and other scatalogs into midnight Manhattan motion trying to keep the lid on what she was digging up –all crowned by the spectacle of Kofi Annan opening up adjacent his office a very energetic document-shredding team working around-the-clock to save the UN and the Democrat party chieftans from the lady’s reporting.
Eternal shame on a UN/Democrat-controlled Pulitzer Prize committee, which must still be averting its eyes from decent people, for not awarding the thing to she who earned it!
I found Gaffney’s articles about the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration into American politics to be VERY interesting….but quickly hushed up .Even if only partially true, it is very frightening.
Valerie Jarrett: “No, you can’t wake the President up. He needs his sleep. He’s got a fundraiser in Las Vegas tomorrow.”
I read somewhere that the hired Libyan security knew something was up several hours before the attck occurred noting movement of rebels and road blocks. It was 9/11, in a dangerous country and 2 other embassies were attacked earlier that day. It’s a no brainer that reinforcements by land and air should have been sent immediately. This is beyond incompetent.
“The critical interval in Benghazi spanned just over 12 hours, from the time the attack began, at 9:40 PM on Sept. 11, until the last contingent of Americans flew out, at 10 AM the next day, Benghazi is in a time zone six hours ahead of Washington. So, in Washington, that critical 12-hour interval ran from 3:40 PM, Sept. 11, until about 4 AM, Sept. 12.”
Lost in all of this seems to be the fact that NONE of the articles that I have seen, not a single one, mentioned that this attack on the consulate was the result of a riot over a video nobody ever heard of. Not one. Seems that EVERYBODY, including the military, the CIA, the NSA, and the State Department all knew that this was a coordinated military assault on the consulate and on the CIA annex. NOBODY mentioned anything about a stupid video.
So why then did the administration cling to this video story for literally weeks after the attack? Why is it that our UN ambassador went on five TV talk shows on the Sunday after the attack and blamed everything on a video? And why did White House press secretary Jay Carney keep blaming the video for roughly a week after the attack? And finally, why did Obama keep mentioning the video at the United Nations, on The View, and on David Letterman weeks after the attack? If it was plain incompetence, somebody needs to be fired, and fast. If it was a coverup, somebody needs to go to jail. And we don’t even want to talk about all the warnings the State Department received several weeks BEFORE the attack.
I just hope that if Romney wins the election this whole thing does NOT get swept under the rug and is forgotten. The four dead Americans that died that night deserve better than that, their families deserve better than that, and the American people deserve better than that. And ask yourself one last question: Does this mean that eleven years after the first attack on 9/11 that we’re still as poorly prepared to respond to a terrorist attack as we were 11 years ago? If so, somebody needs to either be fired or go to jail.
“So why then did the administration cling to this video story for literally weeks after the attack?”
HIS BASE NEEDED TO BE RE-ASSURED THAT IT WASN’T OBAMA’S FAULT, AND IT WAS SUCCESSFUL.
“Why is it that our UN ambassador went on five TV talk shows on the Sunday after the attack and blamed everything on a video?”
SUSAN RICE WAS BEING PLACED IN THE PUBLIC EYE IN ANTICIPATION OF HER ASSUMING THE SECRETARY OF STATE POSITON IN A SECOND TERM.
“And why did White House press secretary Jay Carney keep blaming the video for roughly a week after the attack?
SEE ANSWER TO POINT ONE.”
The reason that they clung to the video story is so they could say it was a civilian mob. If they admitted the attack was by armed terrorists then the attackers are enemy combatants. In which case “assisting the enemy” comes into play, because the POTUS did nothing. By doing nothing he assisted the enemy, if they were armed, trained terorrists, or, if they were just civilians, he waited patiently for tempers to cool. In the latter case it was just “a movie review which got out of hand”, as Mark Steyn sarcastically put it.
Never mind the timeline. I’m waiting for the missing eighteen minute tape. The one in which Valerie Jarett tells Barack to ignore all them ofay generals, drink a warm glass of milk and get a good night’s sleep because he has a rally in Vegas tomorrow.
Obama slept, Americans died.
I dunno if my memory is playing tricks, but it seems to me that in the week following 9/11/12, street demonstrations all over Araby sprang up, featuring english-language references to an incident of blashemy in America. Including a call from various quarters for some sort of restriction on hate speech.
Thses events –flags burnt, some screamers in front of the cameras, were spontaneous –or staged to look that way –some po’d muslims who’d torn themwelves from the internet upon sight of some insulting application of the American 1st Amendment.
But the youtube was three weeks old, and had only a few hundred hits at the time –or so i’ve read in several diverse accounts.
And yet, all the legions of the po’d hit the bricks more or less on signal, following the Obama admin’s ‘breaking the news’ that an Amerivan video had caused ‘Benghazi’.
An investigation would learn who called those follow-on demonstrations –who made sure the signs would be in English, and that some cameras would be around, and so forth.
Who that is, is somebody within a powerful influence network across the lands of Islam, who had a vested interest in supporting the Obama admin’s cover story, and has reason to blame the troubles in no uncertain terms on the American 1st Amendment.
Also what’s missing in the timeline is what happened to the ambassador.
We’ve seen graphic photos of him being dragged, axillary stab wound, undressed. Is there video?
It’s likely he was killed by smoke inhalation and I can understand this is the least painful explanation, but why should we believe that?
The Secretary’s first comment was that the ambassador was carried to the hospital by thoughtful Libyans–they don’t look very friendly in the photos.
Does it strike anybody as curious as we have not heard from anyone, reporter or otherwise about the 4 star in charge of the African Theater, General Hamm? if fact where is he? What do you suppose his answer would be to the question: What happened on 9/11 in Benghazi?
Check “6″
Things that can’t happen in modern First World civilizations
The latest Jennifer Griffen story from Fox says the Gen. ham was in Washington DC at the Pentagon watching the action in real time. He has since retired.
Inciting words of the Obama campaign…Osama is dead and GM is alive days before 9/11 and it wasn’t the video trailer. How any middle east US facilities not be on high alert and well protected on the 1st 9/11 after Osama was killed by “Obama” is nuts.
Talk about an inciting video…how about O Dark 30 tonight just before the election? If I was the US leadership…I would have all hands on deck the Monday eve of our election. Could be a moment to plan for the downside of Osama is dead talking points….this is a video I fear for US personal.
I’m glad to see Claudia dig into the nitty-gritty, but Benghazi just simply fits a general pattern. Obama is happy to see those unruly Americans knocked down a peg. From the Honduras constitutional crisis, to the 2009 Iranian revolution that was shot down, when has our so-called president ever sided with free people? creamsweetener.blogspot.com
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/27/tom-ricks-versus-fox-news-media-critic/191526
Bengazhi is a distraction created by fox news. Lets talk about something more serious.