Unanswered Questions

I've been following the Benghazi hearings, and one thing I've noticed is that most of the recent commentary revolves around the talking points.

How -- and why-- did the account of what happened at Benghazi (i.e. the infamous talking points) go through a dozen iterations, beginning with a fairly detailed description of the potential involvement of al Qaeda that morphed over the course of a day into a simple, gauzy, bland (and false) theory?

A meaningful issue, to be sure. There is no doubt that the obama administration intentionally mislead and lied to congress (no big deal - congress lies to us all the time) and the American public (a much more serious act). That by itself richly deserves condemnation and quite possibly legal action.

However, in my mind the two areas that deserve full investigation and disclosure are the failure of the State Department to provide adequate security to our personnel, and the decision to withhold military assistance once the attack was underway.

A report by an independent panel led by former top diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Gen. Mike Mullen has already concluded that there was "grossly" inadequate security at the mission as a result of managerial and leadership failures at the State Department...

Yeah, but ... who turned down the requests for additional security? At some point someone in the bowels of the State Department said "no." That decision was likely reviewed and approved by senior officials, quite possibly including the then-Secretary of State, hillary clinton.

Who said "no," and who knew about it?

As for withholding military help:

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa.

The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized...

According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound "when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, 'you can't go now, you don't have the authority to go now.'

That leads to the obvious follow-up question. Who issued the order to stand down? And by "who" I mean which individual, not which command.

Mr. Hicks testified this morning that the stand down order for the rescue team in Tripoli came from either AFRICOM or SOCAFRICA.

Did the military heads of those commands issue the stand-down order on their own, or were they passing on orders from above? Keep in mind that the only two people in the chain of command above the AFRICOM commander were then-SECDEF Leon Panetta and CINC barack obama.

Also worth noting is that shortly after the Benghazi attack the AFRICOM commander, General Carter Ham, was relieved, and Leon Panetta resigned.

There are conflicting reports regarding the Ham situation, along with other high-ranking personnel moves. I have no idea what the truth is, but back when I was in uniform we made sure that significant and potentially controversial orders were either in writing or given in front of witnesses. That way there was no doubt where the order originated.

Granted, that was a long time ago and I was a junior enlisted man (SGT E-5), but I would like to think that the situation today is similar. Otherwise how can you be sure of the legitimacy of a life and death order like this one?

I'm not the only one wondering about the pap we're being spoon-fed regarding the lack of a military response.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks.

The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance.

“I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “Were there any military assets in motion, to help folks in Benghazi, [that were] told to stand down? And what did [State Department whistleblower] Greg Hicks say? That Lt. Col. [Steve] Gibson -- a DOD employee, a member of the Army -- was in Tripoli, ready and willing to go to Benghazi, preparing to go to Benghazi, and was told to stand down.”

“Clearly,” Graham added, “our chairman of the Joint Chiefs' rendition that no one was told to stand down is now in question.”

Fortunately, DoD has trained professionals ready to help clear up confusing issues like this.

Asked to comment on Graham’s challenge to the chairman’s veracity, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Rob Firman told Fox News: “They weren’t told to stand down. They were simply told not to go to Benghazi..."

Sounds like Maj. Firman is being groomed as a replacement for spokesweasel Jay Carney.

One final question that has long gone unanswered:

Where was obama during the attack, and what was he doing?