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Benghazi- Obama makes the cowardly call

Many of us grew up while the old westerns were still on television-  In countless movies a Calvary Patrol saw smoke, or heard shooting, and rode to the rescue of a west bound wagon train or some rancher who was being attacked by Indians.

 

Sometimes they arrived in time, sometimes not, but they tried.    Most of the stories were products of a writer’s imagination, some were loosely based on facts.  The one constant that was true, at least up to September 11th 2012, is pretty basic.  US Military has a long history of putting together rescue missions based on whatever limited intelligence might be available at the time.  That’s what out men an women in uniform do.  If anyone believes otherwise look at the POW Raid at Japanese camp near Cabanatuan City, in the Philippines.

In late January 1945, a plan was developed by Sixth Army leaders and Filipino guerrillas to send a small force to rescue the prisoners. A group of over a hundred Rangers and Scouts and several hundred guerrillas traveled 30 miles (48 km) behind Japanese lines to reach the camp.

In a nighttime raid, under the cover of darkness and a distraction by a P-61 Black Widow, the group surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties. The Rangers, Scouts, and guerrillas escorted the POWs back to American lines. The rescue allowed the prisoners to tell of the death march and prison camp atrocities, which sparked a new rush of resolve for the war against Japan. The rescuers were awarded commendations by MacArthur, and were also recognized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A memorial now sits on the site of the former camp, and the events of the raid have been depicted in several films.

More The Raid at Cabanatuan City

Or look at the heroic lengths our Chopper Pilots went to in Vietnam to Medevac wounded and search for downed pilots..

Or look at the impossible stunt General George Patton pulled off in December 1944 to help rescue  thousands of American cut off by the Nazis at  Ardennes during the Battle of the Bluge-  American Military History is full of similar stories, missions put together during the confusion of battle with little to no real time or accurate intelligence.  Some worked out well, some didn’t.  But if there was a way, they tried..

At least until September 11th 2012 when the Obama Administration didn’t have the guts to try — Hell the Obama Administration didn’t have the guts to move people close enough to try.

From streiff‘s Did Obama Refuse To Aid Our Men In Benghazi? over at Red State

President Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Biden in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. ET, a little more than an hour after the onset of the attack. The Pentagon began moving military assets:

– Eight from Special Operations were sent from Tripoli.

– A “FAST team” (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security team) of Marines from Rota, Spain, were sent to guard the Embassy in Tripoli.
– A Special Operations force was moved from central Europe to Sigonella Air Base in southern Italy, just 480 miles from Benghazi.
– F-16s and Apache helicopters remained parked and unused at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.
– Two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean Sea were moved off the coast of Libya on the day of the attack but were never used.
Asked why the U.S. military did not do more, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the first rule in such a situation is not to deploy troops into harm’s way unless there is a clear picture of what is happening.

One doesn’t know what to make of Panetta’s statement. You never have a “clear picture” of an evolving combat operation. This is what Clausewitz referred to as “friction” and the “fog of war.” It seems that a reasonable observer would conclude that real time video feed plus real time audio communications with the people in the consulate provided as close to a “clear picture” as possible in the absence of a Vulcan Mind Meld with the terrorist leader.

So we have a rescue force staged in Sigonella. We have the people on the ground begging for help. And we seem to have had an AC-130 gunship in near proximity to the action. And a decision was made by someone that caused the death of these four men just as surely as any action by a Libyan terrorist:

Read All of   Did Obama Refuse To Aid Our Men In Benghazi?

 

We know that there was at least one drone overhead during the entire battle- We know there was an AC130 Gunship around an hour away.  There were F16 sitting parked in Italy– well under an hour away.  The was at least one special ops team ready to drop in and help out-  Those Ex Seals did a hellva job as it was, they managed to save 30 American lives, by sacrificing their own.  We’ll never know if a rescue attempt would have saved them or not–

Barack Obama didn’t have the guts to find out..

But  as always Obama has a lot of non answers and excuses, as reported by FOX News

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.

“There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here,” he said Thursday. “But the basic principle here … is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.”

Obama also said in the TV interview, as he said previously said, the administration is going to “investigate what happened to make sure it never happens again” and find out who was involved in the attack so they can be brought to justice.

“I guarantee you that everybody in the State Department, our military, CIA, you name it, have a No.1 priority making sure that people are safe. These are our folks. And we’re going to find out exactly what happened but what we’re also going to do is make sure that we are identify those who carried out these terrible attacks,” the president said.

Read Obama avoids question on whether Americans in Libya were denied requests for help

Now the Coward In Chief is boasting about how he’s going to hunt down the murders, One pass of a AC130 Gunship during the battle would have saved him a lot of hunting- and might have saved three lives.  Just ID the bodies laying on the ground..

Perhaps the President couldn’t get Valerie Jarrett’s permission to act like a man.  A field commander who refused to make a reasonable attempt to rescue trapped soldiers could find himself charged with cowardliness in the face of the enemy.  Maybe Obama thought he could hide his cowardly behavior behind a stupid video-

He claims his actions have nothing to do with the election- A man  who can’t be trusted to make a command decision cannot be trusted to be Commander in Chief.

Or maybe it wasn’t cowardliness at all, at least in the military sense.  Maybe it was political calculation.  For months Obama has been boasting about having Al Qaeda on the run– Clearly that is not the case.

Worse there are indications that the CIA Station in Benghazi was home to another Obama Gun Running Scheme, another gun running scheme that may have gone bad– kinda like Fast and Furious.

As always, our men and women were ready and willing to do the mission-

For whatever reason Barack Obama Refused to make the gutsy call-

 

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grumpy

Old Grey and Very Grumpy- Just ask my grandson A little on the conservative side politically

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