Panetta: We Can't Just Go Saving Every Consulate That's Under Terrorist Attack
Demspey: We Didn't Act Because State Never Asked Us To, But It's Also Not Their Fault. It's No One's Fault. Sometimes Shit Happens, and Who Ya Gonna Call? Not Us.

Let's just call it The Immaculate Massacre. We're being asked to believe that no one was responsible... except God, I suppose.

Notice that none of the perpetrators are responsible either -- despite the Administration's spin that the only thing that matters is finding the guilty parties (and not the merely grossly negligent parties) they haven't found those either, and in fact I haven't heard any sort of push on this. The Administration tells us this is of critical importance, and then does everything possible to bury the story so that the public forgets about it

Panetta:

“The United States military is not and should not be a global 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,” Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The military shouldn't be capable of intervening to save US personnel from technically-US-territory in a country they just intervened in months ago?

That's too much to ask?

He's also shifting the terms of discussion to "the military." The problem isn't "the military." It's the civilian leadership. But he's shifting the failure of civilian leadership to this supposed inability of the military.

Dempsey:

“Why didn’t you put forces in place to be ready to respond?,” Senator John McCain asked the general.

Dempsey started, “Because we never received a request to do so, number one. And number two, we –”

McCain interrupted, “You never heard of Ambassador Stevens’s repeated warnings?”

“I had, through General Ham,” responded Dempsey, referring to the commander of AFRICOM. “But we never received a request for support from the State Department, which would have allowed us to put forces–”

“So it’s the State Department’s fault?”

“I’m not blaming the State Department,” Dempsey responded.

posted by Ace at 01:47 PM

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