More thoughts on the disgusting nature of the leftist media:
This is truly awful. Between Chuck Woods and Cindy Sheehan, the MSM chose to elevate the latter, a paranoiac who has, on more than a few occasions, abruptly exploded into a fit of anti-semetic apoplexy in situations where the subject of Jews or Israel wasn’t even being discussed. A woman who has used her son’s tragic death to promote causes that had nothing even tangentially to do with the war in Iraq. A woman who’s undeserved fame and and lack of self-awareness have led her into embarrassing public displays that no normal person could witness without cringing.
Chuck Woods simply wants to know why back-up wasn’t provided for his son on the night of his death. It’s a perfectly relevant question, seeing that Tyrone Woods actually requested help. And Woods pere gotten virtually no help from those whose job it is to challenge power and authority. So far, Jake Tapper is the only MSM journalist willing to ask questions on Chuck Woods’s behalf. But these same people, pathetically, did just about everything in their power to promote a woman whose real objective– as distinct from her stated objective of getting justice for her slain son– was to promote a Chomskyite political programme.
Of course, after Sheehan was no longer useful– after the Democrats had won control of congress, and after it seemed assured that they would win back the presidency– the MSM abandoned her. They abetted her in all of her clownish public behavior and in all of her nauseating pronouncements, they let her act the fool as long as she was useful for good copy and for advancing their political biases– and then, when her usefulness was at an end, they heartlessly abandoned her.
I say “heartless” here because that’s what the MSM’s behavior, at bottom, was. They took advantage of a deeply wounded and vulnerable person. Because in spite of all her political tendentiousness, Sheehan was at heart a grieving mother whose grief had unhinged her. Yes, she was no doubt a radical buffoon before her son’s death, but her obnoxious political activism was just her way of coping. Her behavior was unseemly to most people, but not to herself for the very simple reason that she was without self-awareness. Her grief had killed it. And the MSM took advantage of this lack.
“Heartless” may be an apt description of the MSM’s behavior vis a vis Cindy Sheehan, but on second thought it seems highly insufficient. Words like “monstrous,” “cruel” and “sinister” seem much more appropriate.
Yup.
Rand, I don’t know how the ballots are laid out where you live, but in Kern County, Cindy Sheehan is the *top* posted candidate running for vice president, with Roseanne Barr running as president. Party affiliation? “Peace and Freedom”
The Vile Rat’s mom is none too happy either.
This is germane.
The British are wondering why we never bothered to call them. They say they had far more forces in Benghazi than we did. Of course a call at that level would need to come from… oh, no wonder.
The closest available backups were on the East Coast of the United States, as per this report. (That would probably be the alert SEAL team). By the time they got to Sigonella, the State Department quick reaction team from Tripoli had already arrived and was pulling everybody out. Also, the nearest AC-130 was a continent away (presumably in Afghanistan) busily being used to shoot Taliban.
The NYT article mentions nothing about available backup being in the US. It says the CIA responded with a half dozen agents, but it doesn’t say anything about the location of a SEAL QRF, another DoD QRF, or AC-130. Also, the timeline is a bit fuzzy, but I think that has less to do with whatever the unnamed senior official reported and how the reporter wrote the article.
I’m still working on these two paragraphs:
About this same time, the reinforcements arrived at the Benghazi airport from Tripoli. Learning that the attacks at the annex had stopped, the team turned its attention to finding Mr. Stevens. But learning that he was at a Benghazi hospital, almost certainly dead, and that the security situation at the hospital was uncertain, the reinforcements headed to the annex.
They arrived shortly after 5 a.m., just before mortar rounds began to hit the annex. That attack, 11 minutes long, killed two men, whom the senior intelligence officials identified for the first time Thursday as C.I.A. security officers, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former members of the Navy SEALs. Until now the men had been publicly identified as State Department contract security officers.
So, if I read this correctly. The initial attacks that claimed Ambassador Stevens happened just after 9pm 9/11. A half dozen CIA folks and a drone arrived around 11pm 9/11, and secured the area. That’s described before these 2 paragraphs. These 2 paragraphs begin with forces getting back to the CIA Annex.
So these paragraphs say more reinforcements arrived just as the CIA annex was getting hit at 5am 9/12. It was this engagement that killed the two former Navy SEALs. And an hour later, Libya provided 50 armed trucks to escort the remaining personnel to the airport.
Questions:
Who were the reinforcements that arrived at 5am?
How many were there?
How did they get from the airport to the annex, while the people at the annex couldn’t get to airport for another hour?
There’s a 3 hour gap between the ending of the initial attack (including the small arms fire after the initial retreat to the annex) and the assault at 5am; what happened in that period?
There’s also a confusion on page 1, which suggests the reinforcements that came at 5am included “two military commandos” and that two CIA security officers were killed. Is that now 6 Americans killed, or were the two CIA Security officers and military commandos referencing the two former SEALs Woods and Doherty? If it is referencing the 2 former SEALs, how come first hand reports from Woods suggested he was with Stevens just prior to the initial attack? And if Woods and Doherty were not there for the initial attack, who the hell was protecting the Ambassador? Anyone? Did he have no protection?
And back to some of the original concerns; while all this was going on: What was Obama doing?
There’s a 3 hour gap between the ending of the initial attack (including the small arms fire after the initial retreat to the annex) and the assault at 5am; what happened in that period? – Nothing – fighting had stopped, those reinforcements that were available were on their way, and the consulate personnel hunkered down.
If nothing was happening because the fighting had stopped, where was the State Department in calling for support from the Libyan government? As George notes, where were the calls to allies in the region? There is wounded “hunkered down” and a fatally injured Ambassador in an unsecure hospital, while nothing is happening?