I'm not sure just how familiar you are with the story of Ambassador Chris Stevens. But, here is actually the problem not really Hillary. Chris Stevens was like many soldiers who have died for their country in that they could tolerate great risk for their countries. He was asked by the State department to go somewhere safer than Benghazi but the people loved him there. Unfortunately there were also ISIS soldiers there who wanted to kill him. Where he was could NOT be defended properly ever. It was like trying to defend your home if 200 people with Kalashnikovs with RPG (rocket propelled Grenades attacked you. Unless you are Rambo or something NO ONE would have survived that onslaught even though 17 Benghazis who loved Ambassador Chris Stevens also died defending him by giving up their lives besides the other three U.S. "Soldiers" who were with him at the time. The State department thought it was unsafe where he was. I don't think anyone but him wanted him there in that risk level. So, he died like a soldier for his country while being called an Ambassador. He's one of many heros of the U.S. STate Department worldwide now.
- Benghazi panel caps 2-year probe: No bombshell, faults administration. By Stephen Collinson, CNN. Updated...
The tenacity of Chris Stevens.
The
report reveals the determination of Stevens to keep the post open in
Benghazi — "Chris had, I think a different tolerance of risk than I
did," said Joan Polaschik, former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya.
--
After the fall of the Gadhaffi regime in 2011, one of Clinton's top
State Department aides, Jake Sullivan, asked a colleague what it would
take to get a team back to the Libyan capital of Tripoli to re-open the
U.S. embassy.
-- "An ambassador to
Libya who actually wants to go. Locking Pat Kennedy (then Under
Secretary for Management) in a closet for long enough to actually take
some real risks," the colleage emailed back.
--
In testimony to the committee, Charlene Lamb, formerly a senior State
Department official, said that Stevens was ultimately responsible for
security at his post. "It is very unfortunate and sad at this point that
Ambassador Stevens was a victim, but that is where ultimate
responsibility lies."
Inadequate security in Benghazi
Throughout
late 2011 and through 2012, security became perilous in Benghazi and
there were at least two attacks on the compound and on diplomats and
other international facilities.
-- A
diplomatic security agent in the city in November 2011 told the
committee that security was "woefully inadequate" with no perimeter
security, low walls and no lighting.
--
The report said the Benghazi mission made repeated requests for new
agents in late 2011 and early 2012. After a series of attacks on
international targets in the city, more requests were made. But "no
additional resources were provided by Washington D.C. to fortify the
compound after the first two attacks. No additional personnel were sent
to secure the facility, despite repeated requests for security experts
on the ground."
-- At one point,
then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland emailed Stevens to ask
how to publicly describe the security incidents in 2012 : "Washington
D.C. dismissed Stevens' multiple requests for additional security
personnel while also asking for help in messaging the very violence he
was seeking security from," the report said.
--
The report, citing a cable from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, suggests
there simply were not sufficient resources in the unstable nation to
send to properly protect Benghazi. In early August 2012, there were only
34 security staff at the embassy. By the end of the month there were
only six.
-- Such shortages might
explain the overreliance on the February 17 local militia in Benghazi to
help secure the outpost -- but a diplomatic security agent quoted in
the report said the group was "undisciplined and unskilled."
--
In 2011 and early 2012, security sometimes became so difficult in
Benghazi that staff were unable to do their jobs reaching out Libyans to
report back to Washington on the restive political situation in the
city. But the report says that in February 2012, the lead diplomatic
security agent at the Tripoli Embassy told the post that "substantive
reporting" was not its job anyway.
"[U]nfortunately,
nobody has advised the (principal diplomatic officer) that Benghazi is
there to support [redacted] operations, not conduct substantive
reporting," the agent wrote, in a possible sign that the primary purpose
of the mission was in fact to support the CIA.
--
The report also finds that the military did not carry out then-Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta's order to deploy U.S. forces to help rescue
Americans under fire in Benghazi.
"What
was disturbing from the evidence the Committee found was that at the
time of the final lethal attack at the Annex, no asset ordered deployed
by the Secretary had even left the ground," the report says.
--
The panel also argues that initial administration talking points
framing the attack as the result of an angry protest over an anti-Muslim
video released in the U.S. were drawn up by administration officials
and did not include accounts from eyewitnesses or the Americans under
attack.
The report quotes an agent
at the Benghazi compound as hearing chanting before a full-on attack
begins, including explosions and gunfire and "70 people rushing into
the compound with an assortment of "AK-47s, grenades, RPG's ... a couple
of different assault rifles."
Another security officer described the assault as "a full on attack against our compound."
Asked if he had seen a protest before the attacks, the officer said: "zip, nothing, nada."
No comments:
Post a Comment