The Pentagon has put out a timeline on Benghazi:
Pentagon leaders knew of the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi an hour after it began, but were unable to mobilize reinforcements based in Europe in time to prevent the death of the U.S. ambassador, according to a timeline released on Friday.
Senior defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, rejected criticism accusing the Pentagon of failing to move quickly to send reinforcements to relieve the consulate or using armed aerial drones to fire on the attackers.
"The Department of Defense acted quickly after learning of the incidents unfolding in Benghazi," said one official, adding that Marines, special forces and other military assets had either been employed or put in motion during the attack.
It is fine to say the consulate was a goner. I agree. Once past the pre-attack phase, it was too late to help the consulate.
But the battle at the annex was not beyond help--or at least not beyond making moves to prepare to help.
The Pentagon admits it moved assets early in case needed at the consulate for a hostage situation. So it had enough notice to do that.
It admits it moved forces from Europe. So we really did have forces available.
To say we had no units available because none were on standby seems quite the dodge. With what we spend on defense, with tens of thousands of Army troops in Europe with a number of combat brigades, and with the ability to move them, we couldn't round up a platoon of troops from our variety of forces in Europe?
We didn't go to the sound of the guns during the Battle of Benghazi, and so lost that battle to the jihadis who sacked our consulate and drove us from the annex.
What little force the CIA sent managed to prevent a hostage situation. A little more from the Pentagon might have won the Battle of Benghazi at the annex.
But we didn't send in air power--to scare the attackers or use weapons if that was possible in the confusion of battle.
And we didn't start to send forces to the annex even though other forces moved closer in case they were needed at the consulate.
In the end, even if we'd made a demonstration of air power or even used air power, it might not have been enough.
It might not have been judged wise to commit ground forces, but we didn't even prepare for that option.
War is chaos. Even our military might not have been capable of saving the situation at the annex. But the apparent conflating of the consulate situation with the annex situation does not give me confidence that we truly could not--rather than indicating we chose not to--fight the Battle of Benghazi.
I was unwittingly prescient two days before September 11, 2012, when I complained about a Homeland Security ad campaign using the tongue-in-cheek possibility of a zombie apocalypse to urge citizens to prepare for disaster:
Well, perhaps some man-caused disaster as a reason to prepare will come to mind in a couple days.
I guess you have to break a few diplomatic eggs to "responsibly end" a war on terror.
