Damning evidence surfaces about Libyan attacks

Tyrone Woods was later joined at the scene by fellow former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who was sent in from Tripoli as part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the consulate began -- a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex.

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

U.S. officials argue that there was a period of several hours when the fighting stopped before the mortars were fired at the annex, leading officials to believe the attack was over.

"It was during that (second attack) that two additional U.S. personnel were killed and two others were wounded," a senior administration official said last week in providing details of the attack Those two victims were later confirmed to be Doherty and Woods.

I think there's more to the story. The communication was going on locally between operatives in Benghazi, you act like Obama was on the phone calling the shots, get real.



And CNN's report.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/world/...ack/index.html

The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi's fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...#ixzz2AQzU7ky2

At least when I was in the military if an attack was believed to be over you either pulled the men out or reinforced them you didn't just leave them there alone and assume everything was fine

I am sorry Obama takes full credit for every action of the seals when they were on live in the situation room going after Osama so at least somebody had to have mentioned to him that this was going on.

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FOX news is using 20/20 hind site to make up "what if" scenarios.

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Can you demonstrate where this is the case in the OP's linked story?

The men were contractors...

...they used to be Navy Seals, they were not active Military.

The Clandestine Service is looking for U.S. citizen candidates to fill Paramilitary Operations Officer and Specialized Skills Officer positions....

Minimum requirements for Paramilitary Operations Officers include a bachelor's degree, military special operations or combat arms experience (ground, air or maritime), as well as combat leadership experience.

A paramilitary is a military-esque force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces.[1] Under the Law of Armed Conflict, a state may incorporate a paramilitary organization or armed agency charged with police functions into its armed forces. The other parties to a conflict have to be notified thereof.[2]
The term paramilitary is subjective, depending on what is considered similar to a military force, and what status a force is considered to have. The nature of paramilitary forces therefore varies greatly according to the speaker and the context.

The account given by the senior officials, who did not want to be identified, provided the most detailed description to date of the C.I.A.’s role in Benghazi, a covert presence that appears to have been much more significant than publicly disclosed.
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The senior officials also shed new light on the C.I.A.’s role in Libya.

Within months of the start of the Libyan revolution in February 2011, the agency began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi, a locus of the rebel efforts to oust the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The C.I.A.’s surveillance targets in Benghazi and eastern Libya included Ansar al-Shariah, a militia that some have blamed for the attack on the mission, as well as suspected members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

American intelligence operatives also helped State Department contractors and Libyan officials in tracking shoulder-fired missiles taken from the former Libyan Army arsenals, American officials said.

“There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of continuing investigations by the State Department and the F.B.I.

Absent coordination from Counterterrorism Security Group, a senior US counterterrorism official says the response to the crisis became more confused. The official says the FBI received a call during the attack representing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and requesting agents be deployed. But he and his colleagues agreed the agents "would not make any difference without security and other enablers to get them in the country and synch their efforts with military and diplomatic efforts to maximize their success."

Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.

CBS seems to refute this.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-...ack/?tag=socsh

Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.

One thing that may be considered is that there were no hostages taken.

Following a single background briefing, the State Department has mostly refused to respond to inquiries about Benghazi, citing an ongoing investigation by a review board. But considerable evidence has emerged that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who died in the attack, and his security staff were deeply concerned about what they considered to be inadequate security. Fox Newsreported this week that a secret cable described an Aug. 15 “emergency meeting” at the consulate, at which the State Department’s regional security officer “expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support and the overall size of the compound.”

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From these, and a report Friday by the Wall Street Journal, it emerges that the CIA mission in Benghazi was considerably larger than the consulate and may have been partly responsible for its defense. According to the CIA account, on the night of Sept. 11 a six-member paramilitary force set out to rescue consulate personnel, arriving some 50 minutes after the attack began. Surviving Americans were evacuated to the CIA station, which itself came under attack hours later.

The Pentagon and CIA accounts describe a reaction to the attack that, while inadequate, was the best that could be mustered. Even if so, that leaves the question of why the various agencies were not better prepared for such an emergency, given the clear warnings. Did the Obama administration’s political preoccupation with maintaining a light footprint in Libya lead to an ill-considered reliance on local militias, rather than on U.S. forces? Given the region’s instability, why were no military rapid-reaction assets — such as Special Forces or armed drones — within reach of Northern Africa?

CNN reports that former Central Intelligence Agency director David H. Petraeus wants to tell Congress that he knew “almost immediately” that the attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was perpetrated by terrorists.

According to the source, reports attributing the attack to protests surrounding an anti-Islam video and protests in Cairo were not disproven until after Petraeus made his initial report to Congress.

Despite that, according to CNN, Petraeus had separate talking points from Rice’s and that her talking points came from somewhere else in the administration.

Legislators saw a "real-time film (showing) exactly what happened" on September 11 in Benghazi, starting before the attack began up "through the incident and the exodus," said Feinstein. A source familiar with the House committee hearing said the video included shots of Stevens being dragged out of the building. Sen. Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, described the footage as "a combination of video from a surveillance camera and a drone."

"It gave us a good picture, from the surveillance standpoint, what was happening," Coats said.

At least when I was in the military if an attack was believed to be over you either pulled the men out or reinforced them you didn't just leave them there alone and assume everything was fine now troops are deployed to support action under way all the time especially when you are not sure what is going on. Plus with drones in the air they had a better idea what was happening then the troops on the ground. That is CYA by Penetta and anybody who has been in combat will tell you that.

I am sorry Obama takes full credit for every action of the seals when they were on live in the situation room going after Osama so at least somebody had to have mentioned to him that this was going on.

They had painted the mortar team with a laser for missile guidance misses that are on the drones if the order had been given to fire those men would be alive.

The United States cannot simply invade another country without proper cause and the Libyan government resisted US efforts to send in troops.

Source for this?

Searching for where I read that and can't find it. It was well over a month ago either way so I might have misread or claims may have been redacted.