Self Absorbed Petraeus Makes Administration Fall Guys
Over His Irresponsible Incompetence as Country’s Intelligence Chief.
What is Being Done to Improve US Embassy Security in
Unstable Countries?
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Millennium Media Entertainment, Inc.
We have
been hearing daily for months about the US Consulate Benghazi tragedy, but
nothing about how to prevent such a deadly attack, in the future. People like Senator John McCain only want to
argue about who said what, after the attack.
Not very helpful and that’s not the important issue.
Security
for the Embassies around the world is and nothing has been reported about this. No Congressional hearings have been held about
improving Embassy security, in unstable countries. Can we assume then, that many are open to more
attacks, as the politicians bicker over semantics?
At this
writing, no one seems to know who to hold responsible for the attack. Let me assure you that if the attackers were in
anyway part of Al Qaeda, they would have told us themselves a long time
ago. This distracting issue only continues
because of Willard Mitt Romney’s ridiculous accusations during the campaign.
No
Terrorism Group has claimed credit for the attack that claimed the lives of US
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified the attackers were part of
Al Qaeda and this was an act of terrorism.
Bottom line is Petraeus mismanaged information about the attack and
still is clueless who is responsible.
So, he simply blames Al Qaeda. How
come Al Qaeda hasn’t touted this victory, after over two months? It is not like these murderous glory hounds
to be so publicity shy.
Why didn’t
the CIA say so in the first place, two months ago? Part of the problem is what Petraeus told the
Administration at that time. Now he is
saying something different. This guy has
been over his head at the CIA, since day one.
Doubt very much the CIA misses him.
This could explain how the FBI could run amok inside the CIA’s security
systems, undetected. Or, anyone can do
this.
Not a word from McCain about this,
who’s wants a lynch mob investigation about who said what. Then, McCain forgets to attend a closed door security
briefing about the lethal attack at Benghazi. What is wrong with him?
Petraeus
Mistress Paula Broadwell announced at a University of Denver alumni symposium last
month that that the Benghazi Consulate was attacked because it had taken a
couple of Libyan militiamen prisoners.
She speculated that the attack was possibly an effort to try to and free
the militiamen. What? Thought her boyfriend didn’t tell her any state
secrets. This has been and remains a
joke. Why is anyone in the government
talking to Petraeus anymore about this or anything else?
Some are
calling Petraeus the MacArthur of our times, which is no compliment. Like MacArthur, none of his military strategies
have worked. But he can muster a mean
caravan of 28 cars to attend a party in Tampa hosted by Jill Kelly and is
killer at writing thousands of love emails.
Petraeus
never commanded live fire units and has not personally been in combat. He did get a Bronze Star for being around an
area hit by a mortar round, in 2003. So,
he does like giving himself medals for possibly being anywhere near harm’s
way.
Bronze Stars are awarded to service
people who did something heroic, while engaged in combat and not because they
were in the neighborhood. I picture
Petraeus back in his air conditioned quarters later writing a couple of hundred
emails about his near death experience.
Speaking
of emails by the hundreds and thousands, Marine General John Allen might be
temporally out of the woods with President Obama, but he’s anything but square with
the US Marine Corps, who hates the smallest of messes. The Marine Corps frowns on one of its own
embarrassing them. Allen clearly embarrassed
them and sullied their public image of Marine Virtues, which the Corps views
as a cardinal sin.
Maybe
the War in Afghanistan would be going better if Petraeus and Allen spent less
time flirting via email and more time executing a war, which the American people
entrusted to them. These are grown men
acting like giddy teenagers addicted to Facebook chit-chat, while in charge of
military personnel’s well being during a war.
What’s
up with their getting involved with Jill Kelly’s sister’s child custody
suit? Her former husband has total
custody of their child. It appears that Tampa’s
Family Court doesn’t think too highly of her character. Why in the world, would two four star
generals write character reference letters for her?
Maybe they wanted future invitations to Jill’s
parties? I would think both had bigger
things to do, such as keeping our service men and women alive, fighting
terrorism and rebuilding a nation. Where’s
McCain, Graham and Willard on that? Too busy hunting UN Ambassador Susan Rice, I guess.
We still
don’t know what to call the bad guys who attacked the consulate and killed our
people over two months ago. Were they terrorists,
insurgents, attackers, part of an angry mob or militants? All those labels have been applied. And, why does it matter what we call these
people? I’m going with bad guys. Small timers got lucky that the Consulate had
shoddy security.
Why
aren’t Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham more interested with making sure our
diplomats have the right security now, instead of who said what, when this
happened. Why aren’t they yelling for
heads of anyone who stood in the way of the Benghazi Consulate having the right
security? Who cares what
Susan Rice said? She wasn’t the
Secretary of State. Any remarks Rice
made were based on what Intel an incompetent CIA Director gave the Administration,
when he could tear himself away from penning love emails.
If the
Administration got it wrong during the early days, we most likely have Petraeus
to thank for any confusion. That was
then and this is now. We need leadership
and solutions not unproductive sophomoric bickering. Leadership is needed now, not a childish,
vengeful circus over the last elections.
Let me
tell you about Libya. This was a planned
attack by Libyan militiamen, plain and simple.
The current government there has to get along with a wide assortment of
armed militias. This is why they have
not arrested anyone nor did much to help during assault on the Consulate.
Libya
was a cornucopia of bad decisions. The
Ambassador didn't take any Marines with him to Benghazi, instead relying on a
two former military contractors. It’s
still not clear who else there could fight.
You can't expect a few guys with light
weapons to defend against an attack like that.
No embassy is set up to mount a rescue to a Consulate over four hours
away. There was nothing that could be
done once the attack began.
Anyone
who has been in a firefight will tell you, they don’t last long, particularly
in circumstances like those in Benghazi.
The cavalry arriving shortly after the fighting has commenced, are going
to be just too late. Why didn’t they
send a squad of Marines, stationed at the Embassy? Sending only six CIA Agents to the rescue is ridiculous. Some one has seen too many movies.
Embassies
usually rely on the host governments for protection. Libya is not a normal host country. It barely has a government, overrun by militias
and has no real legitimate security structure.
The Ambassador calls the shots on the ground and he should have had a
well armed Marine Squad with him, at least.
He made a bad call in a very unstable Islamic country. And, that got him killed. No way that this terrible tragedy can be
blamed on anyone above him. They didn’t
cause his or three other Americans’ deaths.
Poor judgment did.
Security
Marines assigned to our Embassies are trained for stuff like this. Stevens clearly didn't understand his
situation. Our Ambassador to China was
attacked by a mob a few months ago and suffered a few minor injuries. Then mob realized what could happen if they
didn't back off. His situation was
resolved quickly. Bad guys around the
world rarely test US Marines. That is a
fact, not a slogan.
Tricky using
US Military in some one's country, legally.
Press said little since about the China attack because they were much more
fixated on Libya, courtesy of Romney & Company. Good thing for Petraeus that the Rumster is
out of the picture. Though it would not
surprise me to hear something nasty come out of Willard, over the next few days
I think two
things about the Press's Libyan Coverage.
1) They exploited an unfortunate situation, showing absolutely no understanding
about what and why it happened, quickly gravitating to what they heard last from
Romney. Willard’s behavior during this
time, was disgraceful, to say the least. 2) Our policies for Embassies are not
new. Wonder what would have reported
today about the over 200 Marines killed by a suicide bomber in Lebanon, on
Regan's watch? I don’t remember a media witch
hunt about who said what, after that very sad tragedy. Nor were there reports about accusations of a
cover up from partisan elected officials.
The Ambassador’s
people did call for help, but no way could anyone have been there in time. Playing the blame game then and now is not
productive. We look like idiots the more
we debate how the Benghazi information was managed. It doesn’t matter any more.
What does is what is going to be done to
better protect our Foreign Service people serving in hostile countries, like
Libya. Put aside the finger pointing and
scandals in favor of designing better security protocols for our Embassies.
The
Libyan Embassy allegedly asked for more protection a few months earlier. They didn't get it over money. You can't cut budgets and expect to be able
to react quickly when something like this happens. Regardless, the Ambassador would have most
likely traveled without enough security anyway.
End of
the day, the Ambassador set himself up. Don't
kid yourself that the bad guys hadn't studied his patterns. I don't fault the Libyan people, who have
gone out of their way to apologize. This
couldn’t have been prevented with help from the local people. Correct, defensive security procedures just were
not in play. Wasting time and money on
finger pointing will not correct this problem, or bring back the four
countrymen we lost.