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Hot Air. com
AFRICOM commander: We knew almost
immediately Benghazi was a terrorist attack
By
Ed Morrissey
July
23, 2013
A
public statement this weekend
about the night of the Benghazi attack from former AFRICOM commander
General
Carter Ham is making the rounds, thanks to some belated attention from
Fox
News, but it’s more curious than revelatory. Now retired, General Ham
spoke at
the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado and addressed his recollections of
the
consulate sacking and the American response.
In Washington for meetings at the time,
Ham told the audience that they
knew within hours that it was a terrorist attack (via JWF):
While
the State Department has
maintained that Rice’s erroneous talking points were the result of
getting and
reacting to information in real time, critics accuse the Obama
administration
of orchestrating a politically motivated cover-up over a botched
response, and
continue to press for answers as to when the administration knew they
were
dealing with a terrorist attack.
When
asked whether he specifically
thought it was a terrorist attack, Ham said, “I don’t know that that
was my
first reaction. But pretty quickly as we started to gain understanding
within
the hours after the initiation of the attack, yes. And at the command I
don’t
think anyone thought differently.”
That
raises all sorts of questions
about the US response — afterward, at least.
The White House maintained for a week
afterward that the attack was a
spontaneous riot sparked by a YouTube movie.
Barack Obama went to the UN two weeks
after the attack and warned that
the future would not belong to “those who slander the prophet of
Islam.” If the
US military command was (correctly) convinced while the attack was
underway
that it was terrorism and not just a demonstration gone bad, why was
the White
House insisting that the latter was the case — for days on end?
However,
Ham seems to take
responsibility for the lack of response during the attack:
Ham
was in Washington for a meeting
of all combat commanders when the attack was under way. Although a
decision was
made to send a drone from eastern Libya toward Benghazi, by the time it
arrived
above the facility, the attack on the mission was winding down.
Ham
knew Ambassador Chris Stevens
was missing and believed he could have possibly been kidnapped. Stevens
and
three other Americans died in the attack.
“In
my mind, at that point we were
no longer in a response to an attack. We were in a recovery and
frankly, I
thought, we were in a potential a hostage rescue situation,” Ham said.
Ham
said although he had authority
to scramble a jet to the scene, he decided there was “not necessity and
there
was not a clear purpose in doing so.”
“To
do what?” he asked. “It was a
very, very uncertain situation.”
Congress
had been asking about the
lack of response in its hearings over the last two months, but didn’t
get a lot
of answers. Ham
appears to be taking
responsibility for that decision, with an explanation that he didn’t
think much
could be done. That
doesn’t explain the
eyewitness testimony about orders for the Tripoli unit to stand down,
but it
does cover the lack of any deployment from the Pentagon’s
rapid-response units
in the region. If
Ham didn’t make that
decision himself, it at least sounds as though he didn’t disagree with
it.
Update:
As a reminder, we’ve known
for a long time — September 27th — that the White House knew almost
immediately
this was a terrorist attack.
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