Valin Posted May 8, 2013 Share Posted May 8, 2013 National Review/The Corner: Bing West May 7, 2013 General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has concluded that generals do not live up to the standards they demand of others. According to the New York Times, “Under General Dempsey’s plan, teams of inspectors will observe and review the procedures . . . in effect for all generals. He said he would be subject to the same rules.” Those new rules would seem to require an assessment of Dempsey’s own performance last September, when he decided not to respond with force to the terrorist attack in Benghazi for ten hours, although our ambassador to Libya was declared missing during the first hour of the assault and two former SEALs died in the tenth hour. Why did Dempsey choose to do nothing? The military has conducted hundreds of assessments for battles throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. At the platoon level, an “After Action” critique is required whenever there are American fatalities. But at the highest level, there has been no military After Action assessment about Benghazi. (Snip) To be clear: the non-response by the military is a matter of procedures too rigid at the top. Far more serious and of a different nature was the claim that a video had provoked a spontaneous mob and that Benghazi was not a terrorist attack. That was the deliberate manipulation or fictional creation of intelligence. It raises the matter of deception. Who provided that rationale to U.N. ambassador Susan Rice? That is a grave issue that has nothing to do with the military. The integrity of the Pentagon is not in question. The purpose of an After Action is to perform better the next time. Is the public seriously to believe that in ten hours Dempsey and the $600 billion dollar Defense Department could not dispatch one ad hoc rescue team, as our embassy in Tripoli did, or order one fighter jet to scramble? (Snip) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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