People are calling it "Benghazi-gate", claiming that it's the biggest scandal since Watergate. That's wrong. It's bigger. People didn't die in Watergate.
I'm just going to get right into this.
The Attack and After
September 11-12, 2012 - Benghazi
8:30 p.m.: U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens exits the consulate to say goodbye to a Turkish diplomat. "Everything is calm at 8:30," reports a state department official. "There's nothing unusual."
9:00 p.m.: Stevens retires to his room for the night. For two months, Stevens had been reporting to the U.S. of increasing violence in Libya. His Security Support Team of 16 armed guards left a month earlier, despite his and Lt. Colonel Andrew Woods' pleas for it to remain. The team now resides in Tripoli. There are only five security guards with Stevens and Information Management Officer Sean Smith.
9:40 p.m.: An attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi reportedly begins, the beginnings of which are caught on tape. The attackers are well armed, organized, and carrying an Islamist Radical flag. They storm and set fire to barracks on the embassy before moving on. A diplomatic security agent sees and monitors the events from a security compound and immediately alerts the State Department in D.C., where Charlene Lamb can now watch the events as they unfold. The agent also alerted the quick reaction security team at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.
9:40-10:15 p.m.: American security guard David Ubben moves Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith to a security room - a large, windowless room with medical supplies and a locked gate. The other security guards assemble machine guns and other supplies. Stevens, Smith, and Ubben are separated from the other Americans, who are in two different areas on the compound themselves.
The security room is only a short-term safe haven, meant to hold until back-up can be brought in.
Around 10 p.m.: Knowing they can't get into the 'safe haven', the Islamists set the building on fire and leave. The three Americans attempt to find clean air, fail, and are forced to exit the safe haven. Ubben finds a window in the compound and climbs out. When his two companions don't follow, he goes back in. After several attempts, he is forced to leave. He climbs to the top of a building and radios the other agents. Three agents arrive and enter the burning building.
10:15-10:45 p.m.: Sean Smith is found dead. 6 Americans and 16 members of the Libyan militia arrive from the annex a mile away.
11:00 p.m.: The forces can no longer hold the compound. The back-up from the annex and the remaining security guards take Smith's body with them as they leave. They drive to the annex. They are fired upon by grenades and AK-47s.
Looters scavenge around the main residence and find Stevens (also on tape). At first he appears dead, but they then notice he is breathing.
1:00-1:45 a.m.: Stevens arrives at the hospital where doctors attempt to save his life. He dies of severe asphyxiation. (*NOTE: There are discrepancies about how and when Stevens died. There is a video of him being found by the looters, as I mentioned about, and the official report says he died of smoke inhalation. Immediately following the attack, though, some representatives spoke out about the situation and said he was tortured and/or sodomized by the Libyans before his death and others say he was shot in the hospital after someone revealed his location to the attackers.)
1:30 a.m.: The team of reinforcements arrives from Tripoli. At the annex, the men are still being attacked.
4:00 a.m.: An attack is made that is "planned and precise". American security guards Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods are killed. The annex is evacuated.
September 11-12, 2012 - United States (6 hour time difference behind Libya)
The official timeline from the Pentagon
This will be dissected and corrected later
3:42 p.m.: The U.S. military's Africa Command ordered an unmanned surveillance drone over the embassy 17 minutes after the attack began. It did not arrive for another hour.
4:30 p.m.: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's office is notified of the attack. Obama, Panetta, and Army General Martin Dempsey discuss what to do next.
6:07 p.m.: The White House receives an email: "Ansar al-Sharia claims responsibility for Benghazi attacks."
6-8 p.m.: Panetta and Dempsey begin discussions with General Ham, head of Africom, the African Command. The group gives verbal orders to "deploy a team of Marine anti-terrorism troops...and two special forces unites", one stationed in the United States and one in Europe.
10:28 p.m.: The Associated Press releases a statement from Hillary Clinton blaming an anti-Muslim video made by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula from a few weeks earlier. Doherty and Woods have not been killed yet.
Early morning: D.C. receives news that Ambassador Stevens is dead. Barack Obama does not. He has been in bed for several hours.
September 12, 2012
Obama says Benghazi was an "act of terror," but not "terrorism."
September 14, 2012
The White House issues a statement saying that there was no evidence of this being a planned attack.
September 16, 2012
Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf says that the attack had been planned months ahead of time. U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, says there is no evidence that attack was planned.
September 18, 2012
Obama says extremists used the "offensive" video as an excuse for violence against the U.S.
September 20, 2012
White House spokesperson refers to the attack as terrorism. Obama, at a town hall meeting, says that "extremists" took advantage of "natural protests" to the anti-Muslim video.
September 21, 2012
Clinton calls it a terrorist attack.
September 24-25, 2012
Obama is asked on The View if the attack was a terrorist attack. He says it's under investigation.
September 27, 2012
A White House spokesperson says that Obama believes it was a terrorist attack.
Seriously, now, what happened?
Does any of that look remotely suspicious to you? There are so many things wrong with this story that I'm not even sure where to begin. Let me first say, though, that this will be the post where you might decide I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist and never come back. Or it might be the post where you decide that this country is so damn scary that it's time to pick up your passport and get outta here. I suggest Switzerland.
1) Let's start with the obvious - the strange refusal to refer to the attack as a terrorist attack when the White House knew within hours that that's exactly what it was. Instead, they blamed it on the anti-Muslim film by Nakoula, who they arrested and who was later sentenced to a year in prison for being a "danger to the community" and because the judge had "a lack of trust in the defendant." In other words, Nakoula exercised his right to the 1st Amendment, which our pro-Islamic government didn't like, and was then made into a scapegoat because, god dammit, Obama said somebody would be punished for this.
The truth - Obama's only accomplishment in four years has been his claim to ending terrorism by killing Osama bin Laden. Calling this attack what it actually was so soon before the election jeopardized his whole platform.
2) Let's talk, now, about why no one helped our Americans as the White House watched them die on screens in front of them. I mentioned General Ham of Africom briefly. We need to spend some more time on him. In Stuttgart, Germany, Ham received the same cries for help that the White House received. He immediately put together a response team and informed the Pentagon that he was prepared to help. He was told to stand down. He decided to ignore the command and, less than 30 seconds after this decision was made, his second in command, David Rodriguez, told him he was relieved of command.
On October 18, Panetta announced that Ham was retiring, which was strange since he'd only served a year and a half of this three year term. His replacement was David Rodriguez. After several people questioned whether he was being forced to quit because of Benghazi, the official statement became he was choosing to retire in spring 2013.
3) The drones over Benghazi provided real-time footage of what was happening. Experts say that this should have led to a quicker military response. Speaking of which, that group from Tripoli apparently ran into problems in the airport, delaying their arrival. What's more, that annex full of soldiers near the main residence in Benghazi? From what I can discern, more CIA operatives were around but they were told to "stand down" - not once, but twice. Woods and Doherty disobeyed orders and went to help - resulting, eventually, in their deaths.
4) Hillary Clinton got some weird flu, which left her dehydrated, which caused her to faint, which led a concussion, which caused a blood clot in her head, preventing her from testifying at the Benghazi trial because her term would be over before she would be better (which backfire because Congress is refusing to swear in the new Secretary of State until she speaks). General David Petraeus, head of the CIA, meanwhile, is sudden not credible before his testimony because his extramarital affairs, which had been known about but not released before, are suddenly revealed. Someone really doesn't want us to know some stuff.
5) At the trial in December, four government officials were made scapegoats for the Benghazi attacks and they were fired. Except, not really. Three of them are currently on paid administrative leave and one of them was simply moved to another desk.
6) Where was Obama when this was all happening? Seriously, every big moment (okay, not that last one) of Obama's administration has had a photographer around to capture it. I haven't seen a photo of this one yet.
All this begs the question - why didn't the government want to help our Americans?
Okay, here come the conspiracy theories. Except, when you think about them, they're not really that outrageous. They're totally plausible. And terrifying.
1) Here's a question - why was Ambassador Stevens even in Benghazi? He knew that violence had increased and reported this several times. Answer (in question form) - was he a gun runner? The official U.S. status is to refuse to allow heavy weapons into Syria, but there's a lot of evidence that government officials, including Stevens, are aware of a heavy flow of weapons moving from Libya to Jihadist Syrian rebels. Here's what may have happened (explained to me in a Glen Beck video and then described as best I can here):
- When Obama was elected, Gaddafi (then President of Libya) was ecstatic, praising him as a "friend" and stating that for a country to go from Reagan to a black man of Muslim descent was an achievement that led to the end of disputes between the two countries. That changed quickly.
- BO realized Gaddafi had to go. To do this, he could either: 1) use American troops or 2) use the 'enemy of my enemy' policy, in this case referring to Al-Queda, or the Libyan Opposition composed of several Islamic radical groups. Basically, then, BO decided to support this radical groups as during their uprising against Gaddafi.
- Ambassador Stevens was the middle man between the U.S. and these groups. He worked directly with the leader of the uprising, Belhaj.
- Well, we got rid of Gaddafi. Not long after, The Telegraph reported that Belhaj met with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Turkey. They needed weapons. They got their weapons in September 2012 - on a ship from Benghazi.
- Then Obama wanted President Assad of Syria gone. To do this, they sent weapons through Turkey to Jihadists on the border. (NOTE: Obama is in very good standing with the Prime Minister of Turkey.) The New York Times reported that the CIA had operatives in Turkey working with 'allies' to decide who they would give the weapons to (who would use them to fight Syria). The "allies" that got to pick? The Muslim Brotherhood.
- On September 11, before the attack, Ambassador Stevens was meeting with an ambassador from Turkey.
If that made no sense, I apologize. This is better.
2) Immediately after the attack, someone put forth the idea that all the incompetence was intentional - as was the attack. The theory goes:
- Obama meant for Stevens to get kidnapped, but not killed, in order to use him in a prisoner exchange.
- With whom, you wonder? Omar Abdul Rahman, the Blind Sheikh, perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. Obviously. Rahman is held here in the U.S. and has been for 20 years and is supposed to be there for life.
- Recently, Egyptian President Morsi has been urging Obama to release him and Rep. Peter King confirmed that Obama was negotiating with Morsi.
- Today it's been revealed that he's planning to come and speak with Obama in person.
- Now, I have a few ideas on why Obama would want to exchange prisoners, but those would take WAY too long to get into here. But think about it - Stevens died from smoke inhalation; he was shot or tortured. Maybe they were there to kidnap him. From there, Obama could have swapped prisoners and still come out looking like a hero. And now, suddenly, after 20 years, the Egyptian President is coming over to negotiate for Rahman? Hmmmmmm. Just watch and see what happens with this guy in the next few months.
So there you have it. Well, probably not all of it. Who knows how much else we don't know.
God bless America.
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