Gen Ham losing job over Benghazi?

[jmra]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbi ... -benghazi/

[The Annoyed Man]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbi ... -benghazi/

The answer is "yes, he is." the details are available in breitbart and other sites.

[2farnorth]

Is Obama having trouble finding enough feet to stomp out all the "little fires" that are burning around him now. Still not seeing much in the main stream or yahoo types. I'm sure he's hoping the "storm" will create enough distraction to get him through the election.

[Munk]

Bravo Sierra.

[powerboatr]

hillary should resign as well NOW
then barry should bow out as the buck stopped at him...

[The Annoyed Man]

Here's the kind of stuff I've seen. I don't know if it is true or not, honestly. But it reeks of the kind of malfeasance the Obama administration has been guilty of in the past....so I don't know...

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/a ... n-3279495/

The information I heard today was that General [Carter] Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White
House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow.
Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africom.

Sure enough Obama nominated Gen. David Rodriguez to replace Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.

The Stars and Stripes reported:

President Barack Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command and Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton to succeed Gen. Joseph Dunford as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday.

So all of the above came to me as an attachement to an email from a good friend of mine who has a brother-in-law who is "highly placed" in Naval Intelligence. This BIL has previously had "inside information" about other things which later turned out to be true, but I personally have no way of verifying if the contents of this email are true or not. The gist of the attached story, as you can see, is that the writer is implying that he has some insider information that has not been reported in the media.

On the one hand, this is not surprising because the nation's news media have been carrying Obama's water for so long that you just can't rely on them to report anything anymore. On the other hand, the nation's media ARE increasingly bringing heat to bear on the administration over the Benghazi timeline, and if this stuff is true you would see at least FoxNews covering it, not to mention other mainstream media outlets.

Well, guess what? Fox News IS covering it:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10 ... urces-say/

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood, though, denied the claims that requests for support were turned down.

"We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi," she said. "Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night-and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades."

The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they were never told to deploy. In fact, a Pentagon official says there were never any requests to deploy assets from outside the country. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Spectre gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.

According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," Panetta said Thursday. "But the basic principle here ... is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on."

Panetta is full of bovine excrement. THEY KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON! The drones saw it! The witnesses on the ground were reporting it in real time! Obama was there, in the situation room, watching the live feed from the drone! The enemy heavy weapons were being lased by our guys, and a single Spooky gunship or F16 pass would have eliminated them. The gunship or F16 could have been there even faster than the fast reaction team. The decision to act to save those men was an absolute no-brainer. The reason it wasn't acted on is because the Commie in Chief loves to micromanage everything because he thinks he is so damned smart, and he finally ran into a situation for which his allegedly much vaunted intellect was not prepared, BECAUSE HE HAS NO EXPERIENCE AS A WARRIOR! And his default position is that he despises warriors because they deal in reality and doing hard and self-sacrificing things.... concepts with which he is not familiar..... so he doesn't listen to them when a boots on the ground general tells him, "Mr. President, if you don't act NOW, those men are going to die."

Obama is SUCH a jack wagon.

Here is the body of the email to which all that other stuff was attached:

Sent: 10/29/2012 8:50:29 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time
Subj: BREAKING NEWS

BREAKING: Gen. Carter Ham, CC AFCOM, Relieved of Command Over Benghazi
And the plot gets deeper!!!!!!!!! Just received from a trusted colleague:

Nena - FYI, 2 CIA assets and former NAVY SEALS had disregarded orders to stay put and were able to rescue 5 plus people from the consulate that was approx. 1/2 mile away through some very heavy fire both ways.

They requested assistance several times and were denied. They had AQ mortars painted via laser and requested a C130 attack on the target or a missile strike via a F-22 or F-35. Feedback was they did not want collateral damage of friendlies that may have taken to the streets.

The Pres. and those from alphabet city did not react other than maneuver a few military assets closer. Gen Ham of AFCOM was insistent that if released the military assets would have been able to assist those on the ground during the 7-hour siege which basically came to an end when a mortar struck our 2 NAVY Seals (Ty Woods & Glenn Doherty) that were manning a heavy machine gun.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10 ... urces-say/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Back to Gen. Ham it appears that as of today he has been relieved of command of AFCOM due to his outspoken criticism of the Benghazi attack.

Lead Pursuit is a restricted mailing list

The Fox News story squares with the idea that Genera Ham had moved to preposition an assault team to relieve the beleaguered Americans at the CIA annex, and that he was sacked for it. The CIA is standing by its guns that it DID NOT issue any stand down orders, and just to be clear on that, CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus issued another statement today reiterating that fact.

ALL parties involved on the ground are claiming that a rescue effort was told to stand down, including those who would have mounted the rescue. The CIA is saying that no such order came from them. There is only one other place that order could have come from—the White House. The Obama administration is saying that they did not issue any such order either, but they have lied about every single detail of the timeline since day one, and they've been caught in their web of lies each and every time. I am tending to believe that Ham was sacked for trying to save those men.

The beauty of always telling the truth is that you never have to remember what lies you told. This is a lesson that the Obamadinejad Administration would do well to learn.

[Oldgringo]

TAM wrote:
The beauty of always telling the truth is that you never have to remember what lies you told. This is a lesson that the Obamadinejad Administration would do well to learn.

Yep, that's another thing my dear old mother (R.I.P.) taught me at a very early age.

[Beiruty]

If the stand down story is true. It would be the biggest scandal since 2008.

[RoyGBiv]

his default position is that he despises warriors because they deal in reality and doing hard and self-sacrificing things.... concepts with which he is not familiar

QFT.

The saddest thing is that he still seems to have a chance to win this election.
Or maybe it's that the Fourth Estate is so complicit.

May God save us from ourselves.

[Rex B]

If the stand down story is true. It would be the biggest scandal since 2008.

It should be, but it won't.
There are so many to choose from the media apparently can't decide which one to run with.

[Texas Dan Mosby]

Bottom line is that they just wrote those dudes off.

Period.

Sadly, that's standard operating procedure for the U.S. government, and has been for a long, long time. Our government is more concerned about "political fallout" from harming locals than they are about protecting OUR citizens abroad, and they HAVE been since at least 79'.

While this latest example is exceptionally disgusting and cowardly, it is not exclusive to the Obama administration alone, and has been repeated by administrations as far back as Carter.

I would expect nothing less from the spineless cowards that make up "Team Obama".

[Oldgringo]

Bottom line is that they just wrote those dudes off.

Period.

Sadly, that's standard operating procedure for the U.S. government, and has been for a long, long time. Our government is more concerned about "political fallout" from harming locals than they are about protecting OUR citizens abroad, and they HAVE been since at least 79'.

While this latest example is exceptionally disgusting and cowardly, it is not exclusive to the Obama administration alone, and has been repeated by administrations as far back as Carter.

I would expect nothing less from the spineless cowards that make up "Team Obama".

Anyone remember the old WWII movie, "They Were Expendable"?

[WildBill]

Bottom line is that they just wrote those dudes off.

Period.

While this latest example is exceptionally disgusting and cowardly, it is not exclusive to the Obama administration alone, and has been repeated by administrations as far back as Carter.

I would expect nothing less from the spineless cowards that make up "Team Obama".

By law, he may be the commander-in-chief, but a good commander and leader is supposed to support and protect his people. In this case, he abandoned them during battle.

[bizarrenormality]

If the stand down story is true. It would be the biggest scandal since 2008.

It should be, but it won't.
There are so many to choose from the media apparently can't decide which one to run with.

They're running with the OMG RAIN! story.

[Rex B]

i
I read that had stated he was sending a team regardless and was releived five mijnutes later by a DOD appointee on the scene

wasnt there also an admiral in command of a carrier task force similarly fired this month?