2016 Jan 16^th

Mona Charen today touts a movie, “Thirteen Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.” Charen is once more in a high dudgeon about Hollywood’s anti-war and anti-American films that have had lukewarm receptions.” Perhaps she means Academy Award winning films like “All Quiet on the Western Front,” or “Platoon,” or “Patton,” or “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Who knows what she means except that she tries to denigrate liberal Hollywood and all its works…in this instance her obvious bias makes her look silly.

About the film portrayal of the rescue attempt she says (from the film I presume), “The CIA officer in charge countermanded their (relief force) efforts to leave the annex and head to the consulate a mile away when it first came under attack.” Even if this movie is accurate, and it isn’t, how does a wait of “twenty-five minutes” before a relief column supposedly leaves for the consulate a mile away lead to a 13 hour battle without relief by the consulate’s defenders? Good theater; bad logistics or plainly absurd comments?

There is another side to this story, a side told by the CIA officer who supposedly “countermanded their effort to leave (and go to the rescue of those in the consulate)”: it follows:

“It is the most fateful moment in a movie that purports to present a searingly accurate account of the 2012 attacks that left four Americans dead in Benghazi, Libya: a scene in which the highest-ranking CIA operative at a secret agency compound orders his security team to “stand down” rather than rush off to rescue U.S. diplomats under siege less than a mile away. According to the officer in charge of the CIA’s Benghazi base that night, the scene in the movie is entirely untrue “there never was a stand-down order,” said the base chief known as Bob, speaking publicly for the first time. “At no time did I ever second-guess that the team would depart.” Nor, he said, did he say anything that could be “interpreted as equivalent” to an order to stand down.”

Where is the truth here? Who is telling it? What do we know absolutely? First of all we know that this is still a political football; that Charen will prattle on about whatever she believes will make anyone in the President’s administration appear guilty of heinous crimes, abandoning Americans when they are facing murderous enemies. She has lots of company: Congressman Daryl Issa has accused Secretary Clinton of instructing Secretary of Defense Panetta to stand down from sending aid to Benghazi. That is absurd on its face…one cabinet Secretary telling another what to do? It is quite simply a lie. There is also no evidence that Secretary Clinton knew of any request for additional security. We do know, and Charen fails to mention, that the State Department and the CIA were at odds over whose territory belonged to whom in Libya. The so called “consulate” was in fact a CIA post tasked with recovering shoulder fired missiles. Before Ambassador Stevens left the embassy in Tripoli to visit Benghazi he was warned that the trip would be very dangerous; he disregarded that warning and went anyway.