Reagan Defense Official: If Obama Really Gave the Order to Secure Libya Personnel, ‘There’s a Paper Trail’

A former Department of Defense official said Friday that if President Barack Obama really gave an order to secure U.S. personnel when the consulate in Libya came under assault, there will a paper trail to prove it.
Francis “Bing” West, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the president’s explanation about his actions when the U.S. mission in Benghazi was attacked should be easily verifiable.

“President Obama today said that he gave an order to everyone while the attack was going on to do everything they could to secure the personnel,” West said. “Now that’s really big because that means that those who were turning down [former Navy SEAL] Ty Woods when he was asking for the help were going against the orders of the president of the United States.”

Woods was one of four Americans killed in the Libya assault. Obama on Friday wouldn’t answer directly whether pleas for help on the ground were denied during the attack, telling KUSA-TV, “the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”

“A chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t take an order from the president when he says ‘do everything’ and not put that in writing and send it out to the chain of command,” West said. “If that actually happened the way President Obama today said it happened, there’s a paper trail and I think people reasonably enough can say, ‘well can we see the order?’ because hundreds of others supposedly saw this order.”

“But if there is no order then people have to ask some very basic questions, ‘what the heck happened?’” he said.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/reagan-defense-official-if-obama-really-gave-the-order-to-secure-libya-personnel-theres-a-paper-trail/

Obama’s Inaction in Benghazi Cannot Stand – Our Nation Must Come to A Moment of Reckoning

by Buck Sexton
...
The moment the White House learned the consulate was under assault, the cabinet should have been assembled in the situation room, calling in reinforcements. AC-130 Spectre Gunships, F-16 fighter planes, and Special Operations troops should have been given the green light and told to respond to any hostiles in Benghazi with all necessary force.

This would likely have resulted in Libyan militia casualties, perhaps many of them. It would have looked bad on television for the Obama administration. It would have inflamed the Islamists in the Muslim world who view American presence — even in a country liberated by U.S. action — as an instigation to jihad.

But it was without question the decision that should have been made.

If the political optics in any way dictated the outcome in Libya — if the Obama administration chose to stand down because they would rather let Americans fight for themselves than drop bombs on Libyan terrorists — our entire nation must come to a moment of reckoning. This cannot stand.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obamas-inaction-in-benghazi-cannot-stand-our-nation-must-come-to-a-moment-of-reckoning/

Obama stoops, doesn’t conquer
By Charles Krauthammer

”L’etat, c’est moi.”
— Louis XIV

“This nation. Me.”
— Barack Obama,
third presidential debate

Okay, okay. I’ll give you the context. Obama was talking about “when Tunisians began to protest, this nation, me, my administration, stood with them.” Still. How many democratic leaders (de Gaulle excluded) would place the word “me” in such regal proximity to the word “nation”?

Obama would have made a very good Bourbon. He’s certainly not a very good debater. He showed it again Monday night.

Obama lost. His tone was petty and small. Arguing about Iran’s nuclear program, he actually said to Mitt Romney, “While we were coordinating an international coalition to make sure these sanctions were effective, you were still invested in a Chinese state oil company that was doing business with the Iranian oil sector.” You can’t get smaller than that. You’d expect this in a city council race. But only from the challenger. The sitting councilman would find such an ad hominem beneath him.

That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: “You mentioned . . . that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry?

Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid. As if the ships being retired are dinghies, skipjacks and three-masted schooners. As if an entire branch of the armed forces — the principal projector of American power abroad — is itself some kind of anachronism.

“We have these things called aircraft carriers,” continued the schoolmaster, “where planes land on them.”

This is Obama’s case for fewer vessels? Does he think carriers patrol alone? He doesn’t know that for every one carrier, 10 times as many ships sail in a phalanx of escorts?

Obama may blithely dismiss the need for more ships, but the Navy wants at least 310 and the latest Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel report says that defending America’s vital interests requires 346 ships (vs. 287 today). Does anyone doubt that if we continue as we are headed, down to fewer than 230, the casualty will be entire carrier battle groups, precisely the kind of high-tech force multipliers that Obama pretends our national security requires?

Romney, for his part, showed himself to be fluent enough in foreign policy, although I could have done with a little less Mali (two references) and a lot less “tumult” (five).

But he did have the moment of the night when he took after Obama’s post-inauguration world apology tour. Obama, falling back on his base, flailingly countered that “every fact checker and every reporter”says otherwise.

Oh yeah? What about Obama declaring that America had “dictated” to other nations?

“Mr. President,” said Romney, “America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.”

Obama, rattled, went off into a fog, beginning with “if we’re going to talk about trips that we’ve taken,” followed by a rambling travelogue of a 2008 visit to Israel. As if this is about trip-taking, rather than about defending — vs. denigrating — the honor of the United States while on foreign soil. Americans may care little about Syria and nothing about Mali. But they don’t like presidents going abroad confirming the calumnies of tin-pot dictators.

The rest of Romney’s debate performance was far more passive. He refused the obvious chance to pulverize Obama on Libya. I would’ve taken a baseball bat to Obama’s second-debate claim that no one in his administration, including him, had misled the country on Benghazi. (The misleading is beyond dispute. The only question is whether it was intentional, i.e., deliberate deceit, or unintentional, i.e., scandalous incompetence.) Romney, however, calculated differently: Act presidential. Better use the night to assume a reassuring, non-contentious demeanor.

Romney’s entire strategy in both the second and third debates was to reinforce the status he achieved in debate No. 1 as a plausible alternative president. He therefore went bipartisan, accommodating, above the fray and, above all, nonthreatening.

That’s what Reagan did with Carter in their 1980 debate. If your opponent’s record is dismal and the country quite prepared to toss him out — but not unless you pass the threshold test — what do you do?

Romney chose to do a Reagan: Don’t quarrel. Speak softly. Meet the threshold.

We’ll soon know whether steady-as-she-goes was the right choice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-obama-stoops-doesnt-conquer/2012/10/25/195ab9d4-1ec9-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions

This I Like:

Obama ad -- using kids. Lower than low:

Pro-Obama Ad Has Children Singing About an America Where ‘Sick People Just Die’ & ‘Oil Fills the Sea’

Imagine an America
Where strip mines are fun and free
Where gays can be fixed
And sick people just die
And oil fills the sea

We don’t have to pay for freeways!
Our schools are good enough
Give us endless wars
On foreign shores
And lots of Chinese stuff

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And we’re kinda blaming you

We haven’t killed all the polar bears
But it’s not for lack of trying
The Earth is cracked
Big Bird is sacked
And the atmosphere is frying

Congress went home early
They did their best we know
You can’t cut spending
With elections pending
Unless it’s welfare dough

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And we’re kinda blaming you

Find a park that is still open
And take a breath of poison air
They foreclosed your place
To build a weapon in space
But you can write off your au pair

It’s a little awkward to tell you
But you left us holding the bag
When we look around
The place is all dumbed down
And the long term’s kind of a drag

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And yeah, we’re blaming you

You did your best
You failed the test

Mom and Dad
We’re blaming you