Obama wouldn’t send in the troops while US personnel in Benghazi were under fire. Why would he care about avenging them after their deaths?
Special operators in the region tell Fox News that while Benghazi targets have been identified for months, officials in Washington could “never pull the trigger.” In fact, one source insists that much of the information on Benghazi suspects had been passed along to the White House after being vetted by the Department of Defense and the State Department — and at least one recommendation for direct action on a Benghazi suspect was given to President Obama as recently as Aug. 7.
The men tell Fox News their mission was to capture or kill the suspects in question, and they briefed the acting U.S. ambassador in Libya and the senior CIA representative in the country. The men were told both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an under secretary were briefed about their information and their ability to capture or kill those responsible. Still, they did not get approval from the Department of Defense or the White House.
Some of the individuals report seeing former AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham tell former Libya Chief of Mission Laurence Pope that he could easily submit a plan to kill or capture the suspects, but “politics and fallout kept us from acting.
“It won’t be long, they’re already at war. We are just behind,” said one operator after being asked about the intent of the Muslim Brotherhood to overtake the current Libyan government in Tripoli. “So the terrorism will continue to grow and the terrorists responsible for killing an ambassador are right now growing along with it.”
Meanwhile, months after video, photo and voice documentation on the Benghazi suspects was first presented to high-level military leaders, the State Department and ultimately the White House, prison breaks in the country have eroded security. U.S. special forces have now been relegated to a “villa,” a stopover for the operators before they’re shipped out of the country entirely.
“We put American special operations in harm’s way to develop a picture of these suspects and to seek justice and instead of acting, we stalled. We just let it slip and pass us by and now it’s going to be much more difficult,” one source said, citing 1,200 prisoners escaping two weeks ago. “It’s already blowing up. Daily assassinations, bi-weekly prison escapes, we waited way too long.”
The special operators are starting to get frustrated at the lack of action, and Fox News has been told by multiple sources that one special forces leader “literally yelled” at former Libyan Chief of Mission William Roebuck “and told him, ‘so you’re willing to let these guys get away with murder?’”
To make matters worse, the U.S. trainers have been sitting in their Libyan “villa” now for a number of days after a Libyan military leader kicked the Americans out of the camp where they had been standing-up a Libyan special forces team for nearly a year, backed by U.S. taxpayer dollars. The maneuver by the Libyan chief of defense has “left our guys high and dry,” and this same chief has locked down Tripoli as well, Fox News is told. The sources say U.S. leaders have now let the Libyan government occupy the special forces camp.
Smart power. It’s like power, but without the power part.
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