Military looks to place quick forces after Libya

Sen­ate Armed Ser­vice Com­mit­tee Chair­man Sen. Carl Levin D-Mich. shakes hands with out­go­ing Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton Thurs­day, prior to Panetta tes­ti­fy­ing before the committee’s hear­ing on the Pentagon’s role in respond­ing to the attack last year on the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, Libya, where the ambas­sador and three other Amer­i­cans were killed. Enter­ing the hear­ing room are Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., left, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., sec­ond from left. (Asso­ci­ated Press | J. Scott Applewhite)

DONNA CASSATA

RICHARD LARDNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The U.S. mil­i­tary is deter­mined to posi­tion small, quick reac­tion forces closer to global crises after the rapid assault on the U.S. diplo­matic mis­sion in Libya last Sep­tem­ber kept U.S. armed forces from respond­ing in time to save four Americans.

Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Mar­tin Dempsey, the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Con­gress on Thurs­day that they moved quickly to deploy com­mando teams from Spain and Cen­tral Europe last Sept. 11, the chaotic day of the assault on the U.S. instal­la­tion in Beng­hazi, but the first mil­i­tary unit didn’t arrive until 15 hours after the first of two attacks.

“Time, dis­tance, the lack of an ade­quate warn­ing, events that moved very quickly on the ground pre­vented a more imme­di­ate response,” Panetta said in likely his last Capi­tol Hill appear­ance before step­ping down as Pen­ta­gon chief.

Repub­li­cans have accused the Obama admin­is­tra­tion of an election-year cover-up of a ter­ror­ist attack in the nearly five months since the assault, and they kept up the polit­i­cally charged onslaught on Thurs­day. The mil­i­tary also found itself under attack, with at least one sen­a­tor accus­ing the Joint Chiefs chair­man of ped­dling falsehoods.

Faced with repeated ques­tions about where units were dur­ing the attack and what they were doing, Dempsey said the mil­i­tary is tak­ing steps to deal with the next crisis.

“We’ve asked each of the ser­vices to exam­ine their capa­bil­ity to build addi­tional reaction-like forces, small, rapidly deploy­able forces,” Dempsey said. “A small MAGTF for the Marine Corps, for exam­ple, a Marine air-ground task force. And the Army is look­ing at some options as well to increase the num­ber of these resources across the globe, where the lim­it­ing fac­tor, though will always be basing.”

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, put it in layman’s terms: “So you are mov­ing the fire sta­tions nearer the …?”

“We’re try­ing to build more fire­men. The ques­tion is whether I can build the sta­tions to house them,” Dempsey answered.

In more than four hours of tes­ti­mony, Panetta and Dempsey described a mil­i­tary faced with not a sin­gle attack over sev­eral hours, but two sep­a­rate assaults six hours apart; lit­tle real-time intel­li­gence data and units too far away to mobi­lize quickly. Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Amer­i­cans were killed in the attacks.

Between mid­night and 2 a.m. on the night of the attack, Panetta issued orders, telling two Marine anti-terrorism teams based in Rota, Spain, to pre­pare to deploy to Libya, and he ordered a team of spe­cial oper­a­tions forces in Cen­tral Europe and another team of spe­cial oper­a­tions forces in the U.S. to pre­pare to deploy to a stag­ing base in Europe.

The first of those U.S. mil­i­tary units did not actu­ally arrive in the region until well after the attack was over and Amer­i­cans had been flown out of the coun­try. Just before 8 p.m., the spe­cial oper­a­tions team landed at Sigonella Naval Air Sta­tion in Sicily. An hour later, the Marine team landed in Tripoli.

Defense offi­cials have repeat­edly said that even if the mil­i­tary had been able to get units there a bit faster, there was no way they could have got­ten there in time to make any dif­fer­ence in the deaths of the four Americans.

“The United States mil­i­tary is not and should not be a global 911 ser­vice capa­ble of arriv­ing on the scene within min­utes to every pos­si­ble con­tin­gency around the world,” Panetta told the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Committee.

That failed to pla­cate Repub­li­cans on the panel. In one fierce exchange, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called Dempsey’s state­ment “one of the more bizarre” and argued that if the admin­is­tra­tion had taken secu­rity threats seri­ously, air­craft and other mil­i­tary could have been located at Souda Bay, Crete.

“For you to tes­tify before this com­mit­tee that … con­sis­tent with avail­able threat esti­mates is sim­ply false; that our mil­i­tary was appro­pri­ately respon­sive,” McCain said. “What would have been an inap­pro­pri­ate response since … no forces arrived there until well after these mur­ders took place?”

The gen­eral said the mil­i­tary was con­cerned with mul­ti­ple threats world­wide and, based on time and posi­tion­ing of forces, “we wouldn’t have got­ten there in time.”

Sev­eral com­mit­tee Repub­li­cans pressed Panetta and Dempsey about their dis­cus­sions with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on that fate­ful day and his level of involve­ment, sug­gest­ing that after the ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion the com­man­der in chief was dis­en­gaged as Amer­i­cans died.

Panetta said he and Dempsey were meet­ing with Obama when they first learned of the Libya assault. He said the pres­i­dent told them to deploy forces as quickly as possible.

Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., ques­tioned whether Panetta spoke again to Obama after that first meet­ing. The Pen­ta­gon chief said no but that the White House was in touch with mil­i­tary offi­cials and aware of what was happening.

“Dur­ing the eight-hour period, did he show any curios­ity?” Gra­ham asked.

Panetta said there was no ques­tion the pres­i­dent was con­cerned about Amer­i­can lives. Exas­per­ated with Graham’s inter­rup­tions, Panetta said force­fully, “The pres­i­dent is well-informed about what is going on; make no mis­take about it.”

At one point in the hear­ing, Gra­ham asked Panetta if he knew what time Obama went to sleep that night. The Pen­ta­gon chief said he did not.

Panetta also pushed back against Repub­li­can crit­i­cism that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion ignored warn­ing signs about the attack. The Pen­ta­gon chief insisted there were no signs of or spe­cific intel­li­gence about an immi­nent attack. In the six months prior to the assault, the gov­ern­ment was apprised of 281 threats to diplo­matic mis­sions, con­sulates and other facil­i­ties world­wide, he said.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., pressed Dempsey on why F-16 jets in Aviano, Italy, weren’t sent to Libya. Dempsey said it would have taken up to 20 hours to get the planes ready and on their way, and he added that they would have been the “wrong tool for the job.”

Panetta later explained to the com­mit­tee, “You can’t willy-nilly send F-16s there and blow the hell out of place. … You have to have good intelligence.”

Sen. Saxby Cham­b­liss, R-Ga., asked whether Panetta and Dempsey would describe the Beng­hazi inci­dent as an “intel­li­gence failure.”

Panetta stopped short of using that term, say­ing sim­ply that “some of the ini­tial assess­ments were not on the money.” Dempsey called it an “intel­li­gence gap.”

Sen. James Inhofe, the committee’s top Repub­li­can, crit­i­cized the admin­is­tra­tion for try­ing to “cover up” what he said was clearly a ter­ror­ist attack. The U.S. ambas­sador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, ini­tially attrib­uted the vio­lence to a protest against an American-made, anti-Islam video.

Rice’s com­ments touched off a deeply par­ti­san feud, with Repub­li­cans claim­ing the Obama White House wanted to obscure the rea­sons for the inci­dent to help the president’s re-election bid. The crit­i­cism of Rice was largely respon­si­ble for scut­tling her chances to become sec­re­tary of state.

Panetta is retir­ing after a Wash­ing­ton career that has stretched across four decades, with years as a Cal­i­for­nia con­gress­man, bud­get chief, White House chief of staff to Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and CIA direc­tor who over­saw the hunt for and killing of ter­ror­ist leader Osama bin Laden.

The Defense Depart­ment will bid farewell to Panetta, who has served as defense sec­re­tary since June 2011, in a cer­e­mony on Fri­day. Obama has nom­i­nated for­mer Repub­li­can Sen. Chuck Hagel to suc­ceed Panetta.

Posted by AP News on Feb 7 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.