Who’s responsible for the security failures at the consulate in Benghazi? According to Dana Milbank, the blame lies with fiscal hawks in the House GOP:
For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.
If Milbank was right, and this was just the predictable result of budgetary constraints, then the State Department had no business keeping an outpost open in a high-risk area, if it knew it couldn’t provide adequate security. The thing is, the State Department didn’t refuse to send additional security because it couldn’t afford it. It refused to send additional security because it said (and continues to say) that the security situation was adequate based on the knowledge at the time. Meanwhile, Ambassador Kennedy said yesterday that he has no faith in the diplomatic security services ever being able to defend against an attack of that level. “Under that kind of lethality, we’re never going to have enough guns,” he said. “We’re a diplomatic service. We are not an armed camp.”
This isn’t to diminish State Department funding, which is very important, but it’s also true that the budget has more than doubled since 2004. The big issue, according to the Government Accountability Office’s extensive report on diplomatic security in 2009, is that the security service’s funding and scope has expanded so rapidly that it’s suffered systematic organizational problems as a result.
Blaming the Republicans for that is a cheap shot, and it shows how desperate Democrats are getting on this issue. The State Department was aware of multiple security breaches and red flags in Benghazi in the months leading up to the attack; House Republicans were not. The Security Department had security personnel on the ground warning that the situation was reaching a crisis level; House Republicans did not. House Republicans have a say in the budget, but the State Department is responsible for how that money is spent. And their spending choices were revealing: Officials increased “danger pay” for security personnel in Benghazi, instead of hiring additional security or sending supplies. The buck stops with the officials who made the security decisions and the commander-in-chief, not the House Republicans.
It must be noted that in the Congressional vote to reduce State Department funding, more democrats (including Elijah Cummings who first blamed Republicans for this atrocity) voted for the decreases than Republicans.
This has nothing to do with funding and everything to do with stupidity. The "safe house" was actually a secret CIA facility and you protect those by "hiding them in plain sight." n nAQ didn't know where it was and wanted it destroyed. But they did know where the US Consulate was, and when Hillary's Crew was stupid enough to send the quite popular Ambassador down there without any security preparations, all AQ had to do was shoot up the place a bit — nothing serious but being shot at tends to terrify people — and wait for them to run for shelter. n nIn a poor country, there is no shortage of young boys willing to be lookouts and even if they hadn't already an established practice of handing out $5/$10$20 bills to anyone who came in and told them where the Americans had gone to, in a tribal culture like that, you could safely let it be known that they would be going somewhere on the 11th and we have have some of their money for anyone who can tell us where. n nSo AQ shot up the diplomatic compound, let them escape in vehicles (note that there were zero casualties in this) and then finds out where the diplomats ran to. And three hours later, about the time it would take to do this, they go blow the s*** out of Camp CIA. Note too that the didn't hit the building the diplomats were hiding in, they only killed the two former SEALs (and we can presume there will be two more stars on the wall in Langley, probably three and possibly more). n nThe only thing that went wrong was that the diplomatic staff/security weren't bright enough to drag their VIP (the ambassador) out with them when they ran for cover, and he died, which Hillary's Crew couldn't quite cover up. Otherwise, we would never have heard of this SNFAU. n nHuman beings do not wish to die. The biggest mistake the Obama/Clinton people made was in not providing the folk at the diplomatic compound (which well may have been providing cover for Camp CIA) a place to run *to* if things went bad. A bad option is better than no option and slim odds of survival are a lot better than none — there are some people who can function in such a situation (I am one) and everyone else is so overwhelmed that they inevitably agree with your plan. n nThey had no where *else* to run, and they inevitably were going to run *somewhere* — in failing to provide some *OTHER* option for truly terrified people to employ, Obama/Clinton ensured that their people would blow the cover of Camp CIA as the diplomatic people (at least the Ambassador personally) had to know of its existence — and not wanting to die, would try to get there for sanctuary.
This is a pathetic defense, a sign of desperation. It merely gives the blowhards – er, diehards – something to fight back with. I wondered a few weeks ago if the biggest problem for Dems in the final stretch would be the morale of their base. (We Republicans know from 2006 and 2008 what low morale feels like.) This kind of thing suggests that they are in fact concerned about morale. How anyone can support Obama now is honestly beyond me. nI propose a contest – the first person to see an Obama sign removed from someone's yard wins a Nov 7 trip to Berkeley, the better to enjoy the spectacle of crestfallen liberals after The One is consigned to the ash heap of history.
And how, even hypothetically, would any of this explain why the Administration lied about a terrorist attack. Telling the truth doesn't cost big bucks.
Even if this were true, is this the best allocation the State Dept could come up with? I bet there's 200 Marines protecting the Berlin embassy.
Put 200 Marines around a secret CIA facility — you might just as well paint "CIA" on the roof and hand out maps at the local mosques. Ask any college student who likes to drive fast to point out an unmarked police car for you — it is amazing how easy it is to do. Even when they have the officers use their own personal vehicles, they are still quite predictably vehicles owned by police officers — for anything that they need to be *truly* undercover, they have them borrow their *wives'* cars. n nForget 200 Marines, you could have had a M1-Abrahams tank parked on all four corners of the diplomatic compound and even that would not have negated the very real need of having *SOMEWHERE* for the terrified diplomatic staff to flee *TO*. A "panic room" of sorts — some island of refuge until you can get them out of the country because after something like what happened, you HAVE TO get them out. n nTHIS was the mistake. Scared people will run. nObama/Clinton should have known this and given them a place to run TO…
Personally, I'm waiting to hear what Debbie Wassermann-Schultz has to say beforer I make up my mind. n n
Is it true that even as the Dems are pleading State Dept. poverty, the State Department is spending money to study how to make our embassies in Europe more environmentally friendly? I had heard that story today but no source was given and I cannot vouch for it. If true, it sheds more light on how pathetic the 'blame the GOP' response is.
People, people… we are simply not thinking big enough on this issue. I guess that's one big difference between the Left and the Right. The Left has imagination. Too often it is cruel, horrible, immoral imagination, but imagination nonetheless. n nOccam's Razor applies here. The simplest explanation for denying security funding for Benghazi (and elsewhere I would wager), given the fact that it was *not* a lack of funds, is that the State Dept and Obama Admin did not *want* the Benghazi consulate to be secure. n nNow we can speculate about *why* they didn't want it to be secured against attack (or at least withdraw the staff in the face of an untenable situation), but there it is. I suggest we look to Fast And Furious as a hint. Obama and Co. have a passion for restricting gun ownership and using their fertile (and fetid) imagination concocted the hare-brained scheme to send guns across the Mexican border without any tracing in order to rack up a horrific body count that could be blamed on U.S. gun dealers and justify gun control laws. In Beghazi, I suggest that something equally horrific was at work (and, hence, the coverup like we have seen in Fast & Furious). Perhaps the Dems imagined that they could blame any attack on the GOP for cutting security funding? They are rather late to pushing that meme but it's possible. I haven't heard any, other explanation that makes any sense at all. We just have to realize that these Leftists are absolutely cold-blooded when it comes to increasing their power.
Has anyone explained why the US did not leave Benghazi when the British did? n nAnd, while I am usually immune to conspiracy theories, I keep wondering about David Petreaus, now Director of the CIA. I can think of three different plots, so, October is a long month.
I will give a fourth — the *rented* diplomatic compound was providing cover for the CIA operations center.