- FrontPage Magazine -
http://www.frontpagemag.com -
Why the House Intel Committee’s Benghazi Report is Worthless
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 22, 2014 @ 7:40 pm In The Point | 7 Comments
The House Intelligence Committee’s Final Benghazi Report is a whitewash. That’s why the media is currently running around turning cartwheels and misrepresenting the report.
But let’s clear up some myths about the report.
To quote from its introduction, “the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the Benghazi attacks focused on the Intelligence Community’s activities before, during, and after the attacks in Benghazi… The Committee did receive evidence about the activities of the Defense Department, State Department, and White House personnel, which are explained in both the report and the additional views. But the Committee does not make final conclusions about other agencies to the extent they were not the focus of the Committee’s investigation.”
While the media is treating this as some sort of conclusive overall report, it’s a look at the actions of the CIA.
That said, the report is a joke. I have no idea why it was even released. It’s a meaningless collection of statements undercut within that same report. Here’s another example from the introduction.
“The committee finds that a mixed group of individuals including those affiliated with Al Qaeda, participated in the attacks on US facilities in Benghazi, although the Committee finds that the intelligence was and remains conflicting about the identities, affiliations and motivations of the attackers.”
That entire sentence nullifies itself.
The report is filled with such self-nullifying conclusions in which the conclusion can be summed up as “Uh.”
The report concludes that there was no intelligence failure because there was no specific warning that an attack would occur on September 11. Aside from the “stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence” afterward.
Again the media is wildly misrepresenting this to mean that everything is okay. The report does not say that everything is okay.
The report does mention inadequate State Department security. That much even the State Department’s own report conceded.
Finally there’s the “stand down order” issue which is what Media Matters and their ilk will be focused on.
The “stand down” order was always a red herring since simply preventing personnel from going to the rescue is not considered a stand down order. This has become a legalistic technicality means to suppress the facts.
Here’s what the highest ranking US diplomat said happened.
In an interview with the House Oversight and Reform Committee last month, Greg Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Libya during the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, recalled his conversations with Libyan government officials and U.S. military leaders as he tried to get support to U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials under attack in Benghazi.
“So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the SOCAFRICA commander, his team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the airport to get on the C‑130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have authority to go now,’’ Hicks recalled. “And so they missed the flight.”
Pushed to clarify whether they second rescue missed flight because they were told not to take it, Hicks responded: “They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
Hicks remembers Gibson saying: “I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military.”
No 0ne is denying this happened. Now here’s where the debate over the “stand down order” kicks in. Here’s how General Dempsey explained it.
“They weren’t told to stand down. A `stand down’ means don’t do anything,” he said. “They were told that the mission they were asked to perform was not in Benghazi, but was at Tripoli airport.”
So when the report denies the existence of a stand down order, this is what it’s really saying.
Back to Benghazi, again, same old story. In the heavily massaged words of the report, “There were mere tactical disagreements about the speed with which the team should depart.”
Why?
“Some Annex members wanted to urgently depart the Annex for the TMF to save their State Department colleagues.
There you have it. No stand down order. Just “tactical disagreements” and “strategic patience” and all the rest. And four dead Americans.
I would delve into the claims about the “protest” talking points, but plenty of other people will be doing that. And I only have so much of an appetite for digging through bureaucratese in government coverups. Which is what this once again is.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine:
http://www.frontpagemag.comURL to article:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/why-the-house-intel-committees-benghazi-report-is-worthless/
