Libya

Libya

The administration chose to gamble with the lives of our Libyan ambassador and other Foreign Service personnel there to promote the false illusion for the world-view and especially for the electorate of the United States that they had the area pacified and had Al Qaeda on the run rather than making sure the necessary security was in place to keep them safe.  This would be the narrative that would help propel the present administration to victory in the 2012 elections.  The gamble failed and Ambassador Chris Stevens and Navy Seals Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone woods are now dead.  I wonder if they would have taken the gamble with their own lives in the very dangerous circumstances these men were living through that the American public is only learning about now.      

Ambassador Stevens sent his last urgent message to the State Department at 6:00 PM, the day of the attack, just before visiting with the Turkish Consul General at 7:30 PM.  Their meeting lasted about an hour.  The Ambassador then retired to his quarters for the evening.  At 9:40 PM shouts and gunfire were heard coming from down the street and coming closer.

If the average citizen knew what the Administration knew about what conditions were like in Libya it’s hard to believe any of them wouldn’t

urge the Administration to get our people out of there.

This is what we know now that the State and Defense Departments and the Executive Branch surely had to know about what conditions were like in Libya.  The main source of the information that’s being distributed to the public comes from investigative reporters like Catherine Herridge and Bret Baier and others with Fox News.  Don’t expect to learn anything from the dysfunctional mainstream media.  The lead story on the front page of the New York Times the day after the news broke about the slayings of the Ambassador and Navy Seals was that Derek Jeter needed surgery on an injured ankle:

On 6/1/11 A car bomb explodes in the parking lot of the Tibesky Hotel where Chris Stevens and support personnel were sent a short time before.  In August 2011 they decide it’s too dangerous to stay there and they settle on a compound in a Western part of the city.

On 10/20/11 Khadafi is killed and Stevens is installed as Ambassador to Libya.  He will spend most of his time at the main embassy building in Tripoli.

On 2/12/12 Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood came with a Security Support Team of 16 special operations soldiers.  Stevens wanted this SST group to stay on past the August scheduled time for them to leave, in view of the mounting hostile atmosphere of the region.  They were pulled out on schedule.   

Another team called the Mobile Security Detachment made up of

ex Green Berets and ex Navy Seals was also there.  They were also pulled out.    

All told, there had been over 230 security incidents in Libya in the past year targeted at Westerners.  Ambassador Stevens is growing more and more worried and says so in a series of cables sent to Washington entitled Libya’s Deteriorating Security Situation.

On 4/6/12 a bomb is tossed over the wall of the Benghazi compound and

on 6/6/12 an IUD is placed on the compound’s north gate.  No one is hurt in either incident. 

On 8/8/12 just three days after the State Department pulled the security forces out of Libya, Ambassador Stevens sends another cable to Washington telling about a “series of violent incidents that has dominated the political landscape.”  He says, “What we have seen are not random crimes of opportunity, but rather targeted and discriminate attacks.”  Less than a week later Lieutenant Colonel Woods and his team would leave the country.     

9/11/12  About 6:00 PM Ambassador Stevens sends another cable to the State Department reporting “growing frustration with police and security forces who are too weak to keep the country secure.”  A few hours later he would be murdered. 

One hour after the attack began an unarmed drone circled over the grounds taking pictures and relaying them back to the situation room at the White House.  It hasn’t been stated yet where President Obama was but we know that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta must have been there because he was seen in Washington at five o’clock.  President Obama was to be going to Las Vegas the next day for a scheduled fund raising event and might have been preparing for his trip. 

The drone was getting low on gas and a second one came into play.  These drones have such sophisticated photo equipment that pictures they were storing identified the terrorist that was captured in Turkey days after the attack who was sent to Tunisia.  The drones had laser beams directed at two mortar positions waiting for aircraft from Italy, just one hour flying time away,  that could take them out.  No executive order to do so was ever issued.  It was first understood that Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed by mortar fire at four in the morning.  That has since been updated.  Catherine Herridge reported on 11/2 that the CIA listed their time of death as being 5:26 in the morning.   Sean Smith was killed earlier.  Any action at all could have saved Woods and Doherty.  There was complete inaction on the part of the State and Defense Departments and the Executive.