you're kidding, right?

so the security guys tell bob to get everybody in the cars and get the hell out of there to the airport. but bob, ever the CIA operative, says first we have to tear down the office, and he has his people shredding documents, smashing video cassettes, that sort of thing, wasting valuable life saving minutes on a task that is ridiculous. the security guys are barely able to believe what they're seeing. they argue with bob, they try to explain the urgency of the situation, that an embassy personnel has already been killed, the american ambassador is missing, and the annex is next in a matter of minutes.

bob continues to shred and smash, ignoring them. but they know how close the danger is and realize they're out of time, they are going to have to fight off the arabs who attacked the embassy. they go up to the roof, take up positions, put on night vision goggles and start looking onto the grounds and waiting for the inevitable thugs they know are coming.

they don't have to wait long. they begin to see shadows moving at the periphery of the grounds. one guy goes down and tells bob to kill the inside lights and get everybody behind cover. bob, of course, even now starts to object. the security guy grabs his throat and makes sure he understands that he is no longer in command and that security is giving the orders from here on. bob reluctantly realizes things may have changed.

back up on the roof the guys are holding their fire and waiting till the enemy gets close enough to where they can take the arabs out in clumps and conserve ammunition. when they're sufficiently bunched up, the guys begin using short bursts, killing two or three of the enemy at a time, and even picking off one at a time when they can. the arabs retreat. but they'll be back. and meanwhile more and more of them are arriving at the annex. the security guys know they're in for a long night.

i'm going to condense this. for the next 13 hours they are fighting off wave after wave of the enemy. it is indeed a VERY long night. just before dawn all the enemy pull back, start getting into toyota and driving away. at first the guys think they've managed to hold them off, but then a lone car drives up to the annex gate, stops for half a minute, and then drives away. that's when they realize, holy shit, they're using their cell phone to get location coordinates.

the whole night, in between attacks, the security guys are on the radio with the u.s. military asking where in the hell they are, why aren't they getting air cover, and when are they going to send in the marines. the generals are monitoring this all over the fucking globe and staying mostly silent. there are units in tripole, an hour away. there are ships in the Mediterranean, there are fighter jets that could have flown in 5 hours ago. but they get nothing.

so the lone car drove away 10 minutes ago, the guys can't get off the roof and take cover because they don't know if there's going to be another attack. a couple minutes later the first mortar round comes in. it lands on the grounds short of the building. i'm not going to give away the ending here but what we need to talk about is bob.

none of this ordeal had to happen. what the hell kind of top secret documents are they keeping at an annex in this shithole, benghazi, that bob thinks are so important that he has to shred them, risking the lives of two dozen people? could the u.s. government, the CIA, the pentagon be THAT stupid, to keep anything important in a place like this? we'll never know what the true situation is. but from what i've told you so far you can take a pretty good guess. an american embassy is attacked and the ambassador and an aide are killed because of too little security.  libya, thanks to the u.s. government, an idiot president, a useless congress, libya has been a war zone for 2 years. there shouldn't have been a damned embassy there, or a CIA post, in the first place.

during that two years the u.s. has been bombing libya with more ordinance than was dropped in all of world war II. that's not an exaggeration; it's the truth. the country's infrastructure is completely destroyed. warring factions have destroyed anything u.s. bombs may have missed. ghaddifi has been killed. you can't take a breath without inhaling bullets or shrapnel. and they're keeping something in a marginal CIA annex that needs to be shredded? are you fucking kidding me?

and for what? do i give a shit about what's going on in libya, or if gadaffi is a benevolent dictator or not? hell no. but the whitehouse wants REGIME CHANGE. and the congress is too cowardly to make them justify their whims and take the correct constitutional path before throwing american lives off a cliff. so to answer my own question two paragraphs back, YES, the entire u.s. intelligence agencies, every elected representative, up to and including the president, every general in every branch of the military, YES, they are THAT STUPID! and if you have an ounce of sense you would be shitting yourself right now.

i'm still not finished with this topic.

Lie number 1

initially the whitehouse put out a story supposedly explaining why the american embassy in benghazi, libya was attacked. it's a seriously stupid story, and considering the president signed off on it, you've really got to wonder about the iq in the oval office.

according to the spokesman, a video was posted on youtube that was insulting to islam. a protest ensued in front of the american embassy in this one town. not in tripoli, the capitol of libya, but in this secondary town. and nowhere else in the muslim world, just benghazi.

as more and more people gathered at the protest things began to get rowdy. pretty soon rocks were being thrown. things got out of hand. somehow a fire started. that was the official story.

while this protest was going on, before the fire started, the american ambassador was calling the CIA annex about a mile away and pleading for them to send help. he said there was heavy gunfire and they were being attacked. the station chief, to this day known only as bob, declined. there were american contract security men at the annex and they were ready to go within 5 minutes of the first call. they were ordered to stand down and denied their advice that they should go immediately.

after about 30 minutes, they overheard the ambassador telling the station chief that the whole building was on fire, they were in the safe room but smoke was coming in and if someone didn't get there right away they would be dead. bob refused, he was worried about blowing the cover of the annex.

the american security guys hearing the sit/rep said screw the order, we're going. all the while bob is yelling at them that he is in charge and he is ordering them to stay put. they don't give a shit about bob's orders at this point, they're in their trucks and on their way.

from several blocks away they can see that it's a conflagration, the embassy is engulfed in flames. they do the best they can to find the ambassador and his aid but the flames and the smoke make navigation inside the building impossible. they do find the aid but he's already dead. they were unable to locate the ambassador. all the while they're shooting it out with the "protestors" who are remarkably heavily armed with AKs and grenade launchers, considering this was a spontaneous event that started peacefully because of a youtube video. which by now you should be able to discern that the story is bullshit. this was a planned, coordinated attack.

when they get back to the annex they tell bob that the annex is going to be attacked next and to get everybody out and to the airport at a hundred miles an hour. wait till you hear what bob thinks is more important and wastes critical time doing.

to begin: last night i saw the movie "13 hours". it was good despite the fact that there were no major actors in it. the tension began almost immediately and kept you on the edge of your seat till the end.

it says at the beginning it's based on a true story. if that's the case, anyone who sees it should be soiling their trousers. aside: when i got home i started googling the hell out of it, and in my opinion, it is indeed a very accurate portrayal of the events in benghazi that resulted in the deaths of the american ambassador, chris stephens, an embassy staffer, and two contract security men.

both the book and the movie were helped by the remaining contract security guys who were there and experienced the debacle live. they are on the record saying that they were ordered to stand down when they wanted to rescue the people in the embassy. the CIA denies their statement and maintains that they were never given such an order.

what gives the contractors credibility is, not only are they on the record, but they use their real names. the CIA, by contrast, refuses to reveal the station cheif's name who was also there when the event occurred. in the movie he is referred to as "bob", and the CIA continues to use only that name in reference to him. another point of credibility is the fact that about a dozen CIA operatives resigned directly after the event. why?

so, i have to believe the contract guys. they have nothing to gain by lying and a lot to lose (their lives,   for instance) by revealing their true identities. what is so frightening about this, well, two things, is first, the u.s. government lied to the american people about what really happened, and second, it becomes very clear when watching the movie that nobody is steering the boat. none of the u.s. officials knew what the hell they were doing, the ambassador, chris stephens, being near the top of the moron heap, but even higher is the CIA station chief who definitely should have known better. and even higher than him is the pentagon, the various CENTCOM guys, who let american personel be killed because saving them would have exposed both the lies and the incompetence.

a lot more to say about this and why you should care, but right now i've got to eat.