Benghazi Massacre: A Military Failure As Well?

Did our Commander-in-Chief really watch video of our Libyan embassy being attacked, and refused to order any air or military support to its aid?

Apparently, yes:

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened.

By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the main consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing. In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying 22 men. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

At 5 p.m., President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the Oval Office. The U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily, was 480 miles away from Benghazi. Stationed at Sigonella were Special Operations Forces, transport aircraft, and attack aircraft — a much more formidable force than 22 men from the embassy.

Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.

Lined up at Signonella; but the order never came...

In the meantime, while untrained and poorly led by American standards, the terrorists at Benghazi were proving to be lethal...

...the 22 men from the embassy in Tripoli ...drove to the annex to assist in its defense against persistent terrorist attacks. Around 4 a.m. Libyan time — six hours into the fight — enemy mortar rounds killed two of the defenders on the roof of the annex....

It is bewildering that no U.S. aircraft ever came to the aid of the defenders. If even one F18 had been on station, it would have detected the location of hostiles firing at night and deterred and attacked the mortar sites. For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve....


Any military commander with a shred of honor would resign his post (as Roger Simon suggests) over this appalling dereliction of duty.  But then again, the man who was charged with giving that order was...Barack Hussein Obama.  Who apparently saw his responsibility at the time as making a few offhand remarks about the death of Ambassador Stevens, while checking his watch to make sure he wouldn't miss his flight to Vegas.   Who won't even fully back down from his bullspit cover story about a YouTube video causing the whole damn mess, even as he is roundly being mocked for making the suggestion in the first place.

Think the media will ever come to ask our feckless CIC what his decision-making process was.during the Benghazi Massacre?

Yeah, me neither.  But maybe Mitt Romney can...