The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today?

It
was not a mob reacting to an anti-Muslim film that attacked a US Special
Mission in Benghazi Libya on September 11, 2012, killing four Americans. It was
the scene of a pitched battle, in which as many as 100 terrorists besieged
American diplomats and their security team with RPG’s, mortars and small-arms
fire for over four hours. 4 people died, including the US Ambassador,
Christopher Stevens who happened to be visiting from Tripoli.

Ambassador Stevens
was well known and respected in Libya. He spoke Arabic. He first went to
Benghazi March 2011 as the US Special Representative to the National Transitional Council during the Libyan revolution. Stevens’ itinerary was supposed to last
from Sept. 10 until Sept. 15. The highlight of the visit was to be the
opening of the American Space, a
center intended to serve as a hub for US culture and education.

Confusion remained
about the attack’s origin for much of September. The Obama Administration had
trouble getting its facts straight: Five days after the strike, American
ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, said the unrest in Benghazi began with a protest against an anti-Islam video. It
apparently did not.

Here is a brief timeline: 

Sept. 11: Around 9:30 pm,
attackers begin
firing at the main building of the Special Mission compound with
guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Computer technician Sean Smith dies inside.
Two other Americans, security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty,
responding from a facility a mile away, are later killed in the shootout. In
the battle, Ambassador Stevens is not accounted for, and later turns up at a
nearby hospital, dead of cardiac arrest and smoke inhalation.

Sept. 12: US intelligence
agencies intercept calls between members of Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadist
group suspected of carrying out the attack and members of al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s North African affiliate. The Libyans brag
that, after watching riots on Sept. 11 at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, they had
decided to
go forward with an attack in Benghazi.

Sept. 16: Susan Rice makes her now-infamous
statement.

Let’s also make
it clear that our office in Benghazi was a “Special Mission,” not a consulate,
not an embassy. State
Department officials reported that it was a temporary facility rented from
a local businessman. The building was improved by making the walls higher with masonry concrete and then
adding barbed wire and concertina razor wire on top to further extend the
height of the wall to 12 feet. Guard booths and sandbag emplacements were built
to create defensive positions inside the compound.

But these improvements
were not sufficient.

So, What’s Wrong?

It is important to fully understand
what happened in Benghazi and to use what we find to try our best to blunt the
severity of future attacks. Both
parties should completely endorse that goal.

However,
what we are seeing is an effort to turn the tragedy to political advantage:

On Sept. 11th,
Mr. Romney blasts the Administration, claiming its first response was “to
sympathize” with the attackers:

“Its disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s
first response was not to condemn the attacks on our diplomatic missions, but
to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

On Sept. 26th
Reince Priebus,
chairman of the Republican Party, writes at Real Clear Politics:

“Amid
Middle East turmoil and six weeks before the election, President Obama refuses
to have an honest conversation with the American people… The country deserves
honesty, not obfuscation, from our president.”

On Oct. 2, House
Republicans, Darrell Issa (CA) Chairman; and Jason Chaffetz (UT) send a letter to
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton demanding more information about the assault on the
Benghazi compound.

On Oct. 10th, the House
Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Issa, held a hearing at which State
Department officials testify, conceding that there was no protest. While Under Secretary of State for
Management Patrick Kennedy insisted in testimony on Wednesday that there was no cover-up of the
attack’s true cause.

On Oct. 11th,
during the VP debate, Paul Ryan asks why there were no Marines in Benghazi. However,
Ryan already knew that there were no
Marines in Libya, much less Benghazi.

According to
Foreign Policy,
out of the 285-plus U.S. diplomatic security facilities worldwide, 152 have
Marine Corps detachments, primarily to protect facilities and the classified information they contain.

Col. Harold Van Opdorp, director of the
Marine Senate Liaison office stated in an email to Foreign Policy:

“Overall, the
plan is to grow the number of MCESG (Marine Corps Embassy Security Group) detachments
worldwide to 173. It is also important to note the detachments are charged
with protection of the chancery…

Perimeter security
is the responsibility of the HN [host nation] police/security forces.” 

Here
are the things that were wrong with our security in Libya:

1. Funding
   cuts for State Department Security that reduced global security headcount by at
   least 300 worldwide.
2. Our
   effort to meet Libya’s demands that we keep US soldiers out of their country.

Let’s
look at funding first:
For fiscal 2013, the House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State
Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program, $200 million below the
$2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration.

In
fiscal 2011, House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy
security funding by $128 million. In fiscal 2012, it was cut by $331 million (with
the Senate restoring $88 million).

Under
Ryan’s budget, passed twice by the House, non-defense discretionary spending,
which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in
2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to
embassy security.

Last
year, Sec. Clinton warned that the proposed cuts to her department would be
“detrimental to America’s national security”, a charge rejected by Republicans at the time.

That’s
right; the Republicans cut funds for embassy security, and now are blaming the Administration
for laxity. It seems completely
typical that Congress would cut funding for a program and then bitch about the
logical consequences.

Now Let’s
turn to Libya’s hard line on foreign soldiers: The new government in Libya did
not want US soldiers or foreign national mercenaries on the ground. Some of
this is based on experience with foreign fighters that had been employed by
Ghaddifi against the “freedom fighters” during the revolution.

Instead,
the State Department contracted with a UK based firm, Blue Mountain Group, a security firm
approved by the Libyan government that supplied
Libyan nationals to provide security at the Benghazi facility. The
Embassy in Tripoli also had an agreement with the Libyan February 17th
Brigade to serve as back up support in Benghazi. Stevens was due to meet
with
a representative of the Brigade on 9/11 at 11am, possibly to tweak the
arrangement with the Brigade, since Stevens had worked closely with the
militias throughout the war.

This is
the group that Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State testified about on Wednesday at
the Issa hearings: 

“The
annex U reaction security team arrived with approximately 40 members of the
Libyan 17th February Brigade. They encountered heavy resistance as they
approached the compound. Together with the Diplomatic Security agents, they
helped secure the area around the main building and continued the search for
the Ambassador—again making several trips into the building at their own
peril.”

Based
on what we know, the terrorist force may have numbered 100 or more. Our on-site force was 8, plus the 40
members of 17th February Brigade nearby.

These
measures or lack thereof, to protect the Benghazi Special Mission are now a
major campaign issue.  

Jason Chaffetz,
Issa’s Republican partner in the hearings, and Romney Campaign surrogate, believes
that Libya is so dangerous it requires we take a full-time military stance.
But not so dangerous he couldn’t do a quick “fact” “finding” trip to Libya with little advance notice.

In
no surprise, Chaffetz’ extensive investigation onsite in Libya discovered that
politics was dictating security. He told Fox News:

“Rather than
letting security dictate security, they let politics dictate security.”

Predictably,
all this happened not simply in time for Chaffetz’ and Issa’s hearing on the
attack, but more importantly, in time for Mitt’s big foreign policy
speech,
in which he said:

“The attack on our
Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of the same
forces that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001.”

Imagine
what Commander-in-Chief Romney would do with the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), (passed after
the real 9/11 and extended recently), if all he needs to determine that the
people who attacked the Special Mission building (remember, not the Consulate) are “the
same forces” that attacked the World Trade Center is to send a campaign surrogate to the Tripoli airport for a few
hours.

It
is difficult to understand what the Republicans are trying for here. If their
complaint is lack of consulate security, then they shouldn’t have cut the money
for it.

If
their complaint is that early accounts of what happened were chaotic and
ultimately inaccurate, what else would they expect when the Ambassador is
killed and our team can’t immediately locate his body?

There are
many questions, but when those making the accusations, those who voted to cut
embassy security by nearly half a billion dollars, are conducting the
investigation, it loses any veneer of
objectivity.  

It is not
a non-partisan search for answers.  

We shouldn’t
politicize these terrible events. When we do, it always turns ugly.