Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”
Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.
At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, though, denied the claims that requests for support were turned down.
There was supposed to be a hearing to decide whether or not to dismiss the Mannsuit on Thursday morning. We just learned that the court has postponed it until June 19th.
With an apparent full-blown cover-up and perhaps dozens of public servants eager to talk, the House immediately should move to subpoena the Obama administration for the names and contact information for all 33 Benghazi survivors. It then should subpoena each of them, immunize them against prosecution, and protect them, their jobs, and their pensions and other benefits under the appropriate federal whistleblower statutes.
While some of these people should testify under oath behind closed doors, to protect classified information, others should offer sworn testimony in public hearings.
If Benghazi unfolded as Team Obama claims, and these 33 people have remained Sphinx-like merely because they had nothing contrary to say, so the historical record should read.
If, however, Obama & Company bribed, threatened, or intimidated these public servants to stay silent in order to secure Obama’s reelection, then Benghazi will prove to be a conspiracy more explosive and evil than Watergate.
In a different era, he might have been called a fascist. After all, Hugo Chávez was an anti-Semitic demagogue and chauvinistic nationalist who hated Israel, hated the United States, hated democracy, and favored state control of the economy. A onetime paratrooper and failed coup leader, Chávez aggressively militarized Venezuelan society, creating pro-government citizen brigades to serve as his own praetorian guard and arming them with Russian-made assault rifles. He threatened neighboring countries and constantly warned of looming foreign invasions. He promulgated wild conspiracy theories about Jews and Americans. He befriended the most reactionary and fascistic governments on earth, including the theocracy in Iran, the gangster regime in Russia, and the racist Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe.
I’m happy to call him one in this era. And he is living proof of Jonah Goldberg’s thesis.
Hagel’s errors about the innovations and strategic benefits the surge would provide and his unwillingness to revisit that view suggest our new defense secretary doesn’t have a clue about the key element of 21st-century war and preparedness — counterinsurgency.
But his failure to understand the surge, then and now, pales in comparison to his disastrous ideas about the key foreign-policy challenge facing the United States: a nuclear Iran.
Hagel is and always has been fine with a nuclear Iran, even though Obama says his administration is not. We’re told one of the reasons Obama chose Hagel was that he appreciated his heterodox views on Iran.
It was incumbent upon those of us who believe unthinkable catastrophe will result from a nuclear mullahcracy (and one whose leaders speak of making Israel disappear) to kick up a fuss about Hagel, if for no other reason than to prevent the administration from subtly and quietly downshifting into a policy of “containment.”
Perhaps most important, the nation and the world had to know there was a serious body of opinion in the United States that would not sit idly by in the face of Hagel’s long history of classic anti-Semitic insinuations about Israel’s supposed secret power over Washington’s decision-making process.