Benghazi, the Administration and the Video

For John, BLUF:  The Administration made some possibly wrong decisions on 11 September, that got four of our people killed.  The big problem is that they missed the causes because they focused on some dumb video.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Over at Military Dot Com we have a post on testimony by SecDef Leon Panetta and Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey.  The gist of it is in the headline, "Poor Intel Held Military Out of Benghazi".  Here are paragraphs two through four:

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, but "we did" have air, land and sea assets in the Mediterranean region that could have been called upon when the consulate in Libya came under siege.

While forces in the Med were ready, "it was 9/11 everywhere in the world" and the military had to be on the alert for a potential crisis in other areas, said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"It was really over before we had the opportunity to really know what was happening," Panetta said.

OK, I get it.  We understood there was a danger of riots or worse on the eleventh anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  We prepositioned forces, but didn't know where to send them.  There were potential problems everywhere.  Someone in the know said that an Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, was burned, possibly the German.

So, this gets back to the question of why we made a big deal of the "video" and why some guy is in the slammer out in LA?

My wife says there is a coverup.  I am not sure I would go that far, except to say that the Administration has not yet walked the cat back on the video.  Unless and until they do that, including within the Administration itself, we will be going down wrong paths in our relationships with those Arab nations impacted by the Arab Spring.

Could we have gotten our four folks out and done it without losing many more?  Possible but not guaranteed  It may be debatable.  Were forces being held back due to intelligence saying there were bigger problems afoot, bigger problems that, in the end, did not materialize?  I bet that is quite possible.  I give the Administration that they had decisions to make and they did the best they could, given the circumstances, but the outcomes were bad.

What I will not give the Administration is a pass on blaming it on "the video" and then instigating the arrest of the producer, who would otherwise have not come to the attention of the local Dog Catcher, let alone serious law enforcement.  This was bullying and AG Eric Holder should be ashamed of himself.

Regards  —  Cliff