“Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country“
-The Ranger Creed
Watching the Republicans blunder about in the investigation of what happened in Benghazi kind of makes me want to scream. Who altered the talking points, and why doesn’t really matter to me. At best they are an after thought to what the investigation should be focusing on. Namely, we left our ambassador, his staff and the GRS staff at the CIA annex Oscar Tango Foxtrot in the hopes it would all blow over. We have documented accounts of at least three stand down orders for the GRS staff both in Benghazi and in Tripoli. We also have the (then) acting chief of mission, Gregory Hicks’ testimony that the Special Forces team that was in Tripoli specifically for the purpose of protecting the missions there was given a stand down order from higher (presumably AFRICOM). There is no evidence that any of the numerous tier 1 teams in Europe were even aware of what was happening in Libya, let alone given a WARNO. Despite the assurances of the former SecDef Robert Gates, most experts in military matters agree that they could have gotten at least something in the AO in time to at least assist with the final attack on the CIA annex.
The conclusion quietly reached by a lot of former soldiers, and a lot of SOCOM veterans as well as a lot of active operators is that one of two things happened; either there was a conscious choice not to rescue our people, in the hopes that it would “blow over,” or there was so much dithering that by the time anyone actually made a decision it was already too late. Both are completely antithetical to the warrior mentality. Regardless of what “considerations” need to be made, you rescue your people first. Indeed, Woods and Doherty (as well as their unnamed teammates) openly defied orders, because that is just what warriors do. The heroism that it took to load up and take on crows ranging anywhere from 60-100 armed with technicals that had anti-aircraft guns with a small SOF team can not be understated. It rivals the heroism shown by MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randy Shughart.
Republicans should have asked Hillary Clinton why the hell she ordered Stevens to Benghazi in the first place. They should have asked her, if she “takes full responsibility,” why the hell wasn’t she asking daily about the high threat posts around the world. I can understand the SecState isn’t going to read every single memo, but you’d think that an area that was supposedly as important as Libya was to her, she’d have asked more than passing questions about what the hell was going on. One would have thought Dame Clinton would have learned from her husband’s failings in Gothic Serpent, and maybe made sure that her missions were properly supported. Why haven’t Republicans in both houses asked even the most fundamental questions of her? Why did they allow her farewell tour to be just that? It’s painfully clear that the GOP has a dearth of chutzpah, else they would have hammered this administration about pretty much everything it has done in the last 4 years.
What I think is required is for veterans to remind the GOP the important part of Benghazi: someone screwed up royally, then compounded that screw up by denying any support to our foreign service personnel and CIA officers. This administration doesn’t know how to treat warriors and is openly suspicious of the motivations of sheepdogs. They embarrass themselves, and by extension the rest of America with their befuddled tepid responses. That we don’t call them out on it, or remind them the seriousness of the consequences of their actions leaves some of the culpability in our laps as well. We need to stop being the “crazy PTSD riddled vets” and start being cogent coherent advocates for a responsible posture in our foreign affairs.
Most of all, though, I think we need to get someone with big brass ones that’s willing to call out all politicians. Warriors are men and women of action. The words we live by have power behind them because the words are inspired by deeds. They are not the silken words of career politicians but the honest words of those who have seen the tiger, and know too much bullshitting will get you killed. What we need is a veteran that isn’t afraid to look into the cameras and perhaps more importantly get in the faces of our political critters and say these immortal words: “RANGER THE FUCK UP!“
- Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment.
- Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.
- Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one-hundred-percent and then some.
- Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.
- Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.
- Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.
- Rangers Lead The Way!!!
RLTW
5th Stanza.
Roger fucking that.
RLTW.
If you’re trusting the Republicans to go for the political throat, you’re bound to be disappointed.
Too bad Allen West was voted out of office.
Could you imagine him owning the piss out of these chumps testifying? They’d probably throw him in jail for verbal assault.
Doc, n readers:
I am offering this for consideration. If you can debunk it, go for it. If you can substantiate it, let us know. It came to me in an e-mail today. I know nothing more about it.
Good read:
No way to know if the attribution is real. What I do know is that it was called “real” by a retired USAF colonel of the Q-clearance sort who’s a personal friend.
Good read:
From a retired Navy Captain who lives in Hawaii: CBA (Cross Border Authority).
The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor – the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.
Once the alarm is sent – in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi – dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EURCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.
That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation. No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.
On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the President of the United States “(POTUS)” has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks. Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya – such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.
How might this process have played out in the White House? If, at the 5:00 p.m. Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta and Vice President Biden, President Obama said about Benghazi: “I think we should not go the military action route,” meaning that no CBA will be granted, then that is it. Case closed.
Another possibility is that the president might have said: “We should do what we can to help them . but no military intervention from outside of Libya.” Those words then constitute “standing orders” all the way down the chain of command, via Panetta and General Dempsey to General Ham and the subordinate commanders who are already gearing up to rescue the besieged outpost. When that meeting took place, it may have seemed as if the consulate attack was over, so President Obama might have thought the situation would stabilize on its own from that point forward. If he then goes upstairs to the family quarters, or otherwise makes himself “unavailable,” then his last standing orders will continue to stand until he changes them, even if he goes to sleep until the morning of September 12.
Nobody in the chain of command below President Obama can countermand his “standing orders” not to send outside military forces into Libyan air space. Nobody. Not Leon Panetta, not Hillary Clinton, not General Dempsey, and not General Ham in Stuttgart, Germany, who is in charge of the forces staging in Sigonella.
Perhaps the president left “no outside military intervention, no cross-border authority” standing orders, and then made himself scarce to those below him seeking further guidance, clarification, or modified orders. Or perhaps he was in the Situation Room watching the Predator videos in live time for all seven hours. We don’t yet know where the president was hour by hour.
But this is 100 percent sure: Panetta and Dempsey would have executed a rescue mission order if the president had given those orders. And like the former SEALs in Benghazi, General Ham and all of the troops under him would have been straining forward in their harnesses, ready to go into battle to save American lives.
The execute orders would be given verbally to General Ham at AFRICOM in Stuttgart, but they would immediately be backed up in official message traffic for the official record. That is why cross-border authority is the King Arthur’s Sword for understanding Benghazi. The POTUS and only the POTUS can pull out that sword.
We can be 100% certain that cross-border authority was never given. How do I know this? Because if CBA was granted and the rescue mission execute orders were handed down, irrefutable records exist today in at least a dozen involved component commands, and probably many more. No general or admiral will risk being hung out to dry for undertaking a mission-gone-wrong that the POTUS later disavows ordering, and instead blames on “loose cannons” or “rogue officers” exceeding their authority. No general or admiral will order U.S. armed forces to cross an international border on a hostile mission unless and until he is certain that the National Command Authority, in the person of the POTUS and his chain of command, has clearly and explicitly given that order: verbally at the outset, but thereafter in written orders and official messages. If they exist, they could be produced today.
When it comes to granting cross-border authority, there are no presidential mumblings or musings to paraphrase or decipher. If you hear confusion over parsed statements given as an excuse for Benghazi, then you are hearing lies. I am sure that hundreds of active-duty military officers know all about the Benghazi execute orders (or the lack thereof), and I am impatiently waiting for one of them to come forward to risk his career and pension as a whistleblower.
Leon Panetta is falling on his sword for President Obama with his absurd-on-its-face, “the U.S. military doesn’t do risky things”-defense of his shameful no-rescue policy. Panetta is utterly destroying his reputation.
General Dempsey joins Panetta on the same sword with his tacit agreement by silence. But why? How far does loyalty extend when it comes to covering up gross dereliction of duty by the president?
General Petraeus, however, has indirectly blown the whistle. He was probably “used” in some way early in the cover-up with the purported CIA intel link to the Mohammed video, and now he feels burned. So he conclusively said via his public affairs officer that the stand-down order did not come from the CIA. Well – what outranks the CIA? Only the national security team at the White House. That means President Obama, and nobody else. Petraeus is naming Obama without naming him. If that is not quite as courageous as blowing a whistle, it is far better than the disgraceful behavior of Panetta and Dempsey.
We do not know the facts for certain, but we do know that the rescue mission stand-down issue revolves around the granting or withholding of cross-border authority, which belongs only to President Obama. More than one hundred gung-ho Force Recon Marines were waiting on the tarmac in Sigonella, just two hours away for the launch order that never came.
Here is what Breitbart reports:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/11/02/Ex-SEAL-Obama-Never-Gave-Cross-Border-Authority-Orders-To-Aid-Americans-Under-Siege-In-Libya
Doc- which Bat you were with?
Doc…
My personal mantra from the Ranger Creed…Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on the Ranger Objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor. A Ranger at Ft. Sam gave me a card with the creed on it and I memorized it, tried to live it. Don Lowe and Don Smith…
I’d like to be put in a room with Hils so I can kick her ass, woman to woman.
I love that creed, i must have written it over 1000 times in RIP. i dont think any of the higher ups know that creed or can comprehend its meaning.
@7 woa I need to make it clear I would have given my left nut to be in a Bat, but I never made it there. I was in 2/16 “rangers” that got their name on Omaha beach when 16th Inf and 75th got mixed in together and Germans surrendered to the feared “Rangers” that were really Big Red One troopers.
Of course the Big Red One had the most combat streamers of any other unit in WWII, so that’s understandable.
Other questions trouble me about Benghazi. Why was the Ambassador not protected by any security other than Libyan nationals with A-K ties and sympathies. Why was he left in such an exposed condition for so long while rescue help was refused over and over. The only assistance he got was from the CIA guys who disobeyed their orders to stand down and they paid with their lives.
Was Stevens set up by Hillary and Obama with a phony mission to recover weapons from A.k extremists while the real purpose was to allow him to be taken hostage for a future prisoner trade?
Is Obama still looking for a way to release the Blind Shiek without appearing to be a Muslim lackey?
These too, are questions that need answers.
If the cross-border authority was not given, as is indicated by the article in Breitbart, because Bodaprez had gone to bed and did not wish to be disturbed, there is no excuse.
Even kings, Caesars and emperors were roused from their slumber if a scout returned from the field with a report. If an envoy was sent back, dead and tied to his horse, it was a signal to attack, not to go snore in a corner undisturbed.
No president has ever been so disdainful or carelss of his duties. This one is the biggest disgrace ever elected to that office, because he just doesn’t give a fuck.
Memorial Day is a good day to think about American servicemen and employees who are deemed to be expendable for reasons that are not even remotely in the national interest. Amoral politicians who endanger or expend lives to achieve partisan political purposes practice the worst kind of treason and show they lack even minimal human decency.
It wasn’t given because Valerie Jarrett has Obama’s balls in a lock box. Nighttime in Benghazi is still early afternoon in DC. Tripoli is only 7 hours ahead. Nah, Bodaprez had a fundraiser in Vegas to get to, dontcha know.
You know, Vegas? That town that Obama said was a waste of money? How many times has he been there since he said that? Eight? Nine? I’ve lost track.
Oh, I thought he was going there to play golf and scare small children.
Still have my Ranger handbook from 1982.
“He had a routine meeting at five o’clock. He never after, during the eight hours when our guys have their lives in danger for, he never called the Secretary of Defense, he never called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he never called the CIA Director,” said [Charles] Krauthammer.
“Who does he call? About five hours in, he calls his Secretary of State. And after the phone call, she releases a statement, essentially about the video and how we denounce any intolerance.”
He added, “It looks as if the only phone call was to construct a cover story at a time when the last two Americans who died were still alive and fighting for their lives. There is a scandal. And that, I think, has got to be uncovered.”
Source: Fox News, 29 May 2013
Well, well, well, the reward for perpetuating falsehoods about Benghazi continues. I can’t wait for the post that will most likely appear at TAH about this later today. Susan (Spontaneous Protest) Rice is now obamaman’s National Security Adviser! No Senate confirmation required. Done.