Not that it will slow down the RW noise machine, but it's good to hear some pubshback on this.
Contrary to what Fox 'News' reported on Friday:
Fox News Channel reported Friday that American officials in the compound repeatedly asked for military help during the assault but were rebuffed by CIA higher-ups.
After Leon Panetta's joint question and answer session with the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General where he made the following statement:
The "basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," he said during a joint question-and-answer session with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey.
"As a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, General Ham, General Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation," Panetta said. General Carter Ham commands the U.S. Africa Command.
Bill Kristol speculated that such a decision could only have been on the Presidential level.
But Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, in a post published Friday, doubted Panetta's explanation and said the fault must lie with Obama himself. "Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No," Kristol wrote. "It would have been a presidential decision."
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor flatly called Kristol "wrong", and issued the following statement:
"Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.
Clearly there is classified information regarding this incident that simply cannot be revealed at this stage. It seems Benghazi has been questioned and 'investigated' and wildly speculated about already, more than any investigation leading up to the Iraq War. If only the media had been as persistent then as they are in this unfortunate, yet isolated, incident.
11:49 AM PT: Here we go with more nonsense from the GOP - Obama cancelled campaign stops over Sandy, but wouldn't cancel trips over Benghazi. Serioulsy Newt Gingrich - he was supposed to cancel travel plans over a consulate being attacked?
NEWT GINGRICH: The bigger issue is whether it’s unemployment or it is what’s happened in Benghazi where we’ve had this strange story over the weekend that the Secretary of Defense apparently refused to obey the President’s order if the President is telling the truth and he actually instructed his assistants to get aid to Benghazi. We’re now being told that the Secretary of Defense canceled that. And I think these kinds of things all drag down the Obama campaign.
You’ll notice he’s canceling his trips over the hurricane. He did not cancel his trips over Benghazi. And so you have to wonder between Benghazi, the price of gasoline, and unemployment just how much burden the President’s going to carry into this last week.
What Gingrich was referring to is when our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was attacked in September, Obama flew off to a plush fundraiser in Las Vegas rather than stay in Washington, D.C., to monitor the hostilities.
12:44 PM PT: Unblelievable, but The Gazette (Iowa) is actually willing to discount all of President Obama's accomplishments and endorse Romney over Benghazi.
And more recently, the ever-changing account of how his administration has responded to and explained — or hasn’t — the assassination of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya is raising troublesome doubts about the chain of command and whether there’s been a cover-up.
http://thegazette.com/...