The Glade 4.0

What I'm curious to find out is what the sources of intel were at the time the comments were made. Hindsight is 20/20 and frankly I give any administration some leeway when it's the immediate aftermath. I'm sure there was a **** ton of stuff going on and it's very easy in that situation to get things wrong.

I still don't see anything sinister in the comments that were made and frankly don't believe that this was some big cover up.

That said, it has become obvious that we weren't handling security concerns over there properly and that's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed.

Bottom line on this story for me:

1. At any given time, there are a huge number of under-the-radar policy errors, mistaken judgments and general screw-ups occurring that get missed, postponed or ignored in the day to day operation of things.

2. Every now and then, one of those problems blows up in people's faces.

3. When that happens, there's a period of time when lots of conflicting information is flying around and the common c.y.a. instinct kicks in for many of those involved.

4. As things start to get sorted out, hindsight makes the original screw up seem like a bigger, more obvious problem than it seemed at the time, and Monday morning quarterbacks with an agenda fuel that perception, further encouraging a c.y.a. instinct on the part of those involved.

5. Eventually, the basic storyline shakes out, the people closest to the screw-up get most of the blame and higher-ups lose a bit of face but that's about it.

6. This general pattern is not particularly surprising or upsetting to me.

7. However, when there's a body count involved, there's a heightened moral duty for those involved to suppress the cya instinct and for the Monday morning quarterbacks to give them the space to step up without getting hammered for it.

8. In this case, neither Obama's people nor Romney's people, respectively, did that.

9. So **** both of them on this one.

The freaking State Department said there was no protest, State Department Officials "made clear that they were not the ones who reached a "conclusion" about a protest being the causal, or preceding, event before the violence that claimed Stevens and three other U.S. diplomats' lives." Yet, UN Ambassador (a State Department position) Susan Rice, insisted multiple times on the 16th that the video trailer was the reason for the protest that precipitated the attack.

If the State Department is reporting the cause for the attack was something that they didn't believe was the cause, who made the decision to go with that line of explanation?

Once again, there was no protest, Ambassador Stevens escorted a Turkish diplomat out the front gate at ~8:30; the attack began at ~9:40 pm with agents hearing loud noises, gunfire and explosions near the front gate. They sound the alarm...

The above timeline was known in "near real time" as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb has testified.

Why rush to present a conclusion that differs from the known facts?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

This just keeps getting more and more interesting by the day.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/12/author-ed-klein-as-benghazi-blame-nears-hillary-clintons-grow-furious/

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10 ... urces-say/


Request for help denied.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

terrible.

It has suddenly become suspiciously difficult to find out what Carrier Strike Group 8 is currently doing.

Carrier Strike Group 8 was, however, announced to be beginning a long deployment with the Fifth and Sixth fleets starting in June.

As far as I can tell, all the other CSGs are accounted for on September 11th, but 8, which was deployed, and was supposedly going to be in the Mediterranean AOR doesn't seem to have as much information out there.

As for Sigonelle, it's around 400 nautical miles from Benghazi. An AC-130 could easily make it in under 2 hours at maximum speed. A jet could make it in half the time, at cruising speed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A squadron of A-10s, maybe an hour.

I mean, what more would you need?

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Holy shitsnacks!

A-10s don't take off from carriers and aren't stationed in Italy. F-16s or F/A-18s would be the most likely choices other than the gunships.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well that's no fun.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Jet fighters are ALWAYS fun. The movie has not yet been msde that wouldn't be better with jet fighters.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I've always had more of an affinity for Air to Mud

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Holy shitsnacks!

David Petreaus said today the neither he, nor anyone else at the CIA told anyone to stand down, effectively throwing the administration under the bus. The orders came directly from the White House. This means either that Secratary of Defense Leon Panetta either unilaterally made a decision without informing the President first, or that President Obama made the real time decision himself.

https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/261936225106132993

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I'd be surprised if it was possible to land an A-10 on a carrier. I'd imagine there is a lot of mass behind one of those things - more than the cables are able to deal with or the catapult can accelerate.

Errrrghhhh......*sploosh*

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

A-10s are not designed to land on carriers, and don't have arresting hooks. I don't know if they could be feasibly altered to do so, but their flown by Air Force pilots who aren't trained for that.

The C-130 on Forrestal was a one-off thing.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

These days, pretty much all fighters are multi-role. The A-10 really isn't a fighter at all.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."