The Latest Benghazi Silliness: A Preemptive Attack on Hillary Clinton
OK, we might as well post something about the latest round of right wing Benghazi hysteria, because it’s all you’re going to hear about this week. Once again, the right wing is successfully manipulating the mainstream media into covering this overblown non-story, and CBS News is right out in front of the pack: Diplomat: U.S. Special Forces Told ‘You Can’t Go’ to Benghazi During Attacks.
The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa.
The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
No assistance arrived from the U.S. military outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.
Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour’s flight from Libya.
“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack.
For some much-needed context on these latest claims of a “cover-up” (a cover-up for which no one seems to be able to explain the reason), check out who’s representing these so-called “whistle-blowers:”
Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing run a law firm together. They are also married. They are also soldiers in the dirty wars we have between the two major parties. When Scooter Libby was indicted, diGenova and Toensing demanded a pardon. In fact, they had been brawling on Libby’s side for years. Toensing even authored an amici curiae brief with the US Court of Appeals in Washington, seeking to overturn the ruling that forced Matthew Cooper and Judy Miller to testify in the Libby case.
[…]
They are nothing more than partisan brawlers. And now they are representing so-called Benghazi whistleblowers who claim they have faced intimidation from their employers in the State Department. Mr. diGenova is representing Mark I. Thompson, who is a deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau. Ms. Toensing is representing Gregory N. Hicks, who was serving as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attacks. Both men will testify on Wednesday before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight & Government Reform Committee.
If they wanted to be taken seriously, they would have retained less notorious counsel.
With the new focus on the State Department, it’s clear that the main target of these accusations is Hillary Clinton; it’s a preemptive attack against her 2016 run for the presidency.
Here’s a devastating refutation of Gregory Hicks’s imaginary cover-up scenario: Benghazi (II): A Military Analysis of the Fox Mystery Man’s Fantasy Rescue Plan | the Best Defense.
I’ll just quote the last line; read the whole thing to see how ridiculous and absurd the accusations by Hicks really are.
The person in the interview is a clown and I am incredibly disappointed in the news for not using Google.