Free Benghazi by Brandon Webb

unarmed drones over Benghazi the night of the attack. A JSOC operator with the GRS element was able to monitor the video feed from the drones for situational awareness purposes, but there was no gunship support.
    A RMED D RONES
    AFRICOM allocated two drones and positioned them overhead, but these drones were not armed with Hellfire missiles. Even if there had been armed drones overhead, launching a missile strike within yards of the annex would have been very risky.

 
    6
    Conclusion
    W HAT STANDS OUT the most from the Benghazi attack is that America lost four great men. Chris Stevens was a very sharp ambassador who understood Libya like few other Americans. Sean Smith was a dedicated communications specialist for the State Department and an Air Force veteran who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Glen Doherty and Ty Woods were two of America’s best, showing intense moral and physical courage during the night of the attack and the morning after.
    Beyond an epitaph for the fallen, Benghazi must be viewed as a commentary on American foreign policy and counterterrorism strategy. What lessons can be learned from the failures of Benghazi? It is beyond concerning how the media lied and distorted the truth about the attack; caught up in the fervor of the 2012 presidential election, much of both the mainstream and alternative media got it wrong. The lesson to Americans is clear in this case: take what you hear with a grain of salt and always question the narratives, and the backgrounds of the authors whose stories are being sold to you. Even if it is coming from your favorite source of trusted news. None of these outlets constitutes a paragon of truthfulness.
    The security failures at the consulate are appalling; however, in the aftermath of any attack, it is natural to focus on a lack of security. After any devastating terrorist assault, be it 9/11/01 or 9/11/12, security will always be seen as inadequate in hindsight. Still, a more permanent solution should have been implemented in Benghazi much sooner. Ambassador Stevens pushed for this, knowing how important Benghazi would be for US interests.
    Instead, it was labeled as a Temporary Mission Facility and never given the defenses that this mission required. This was the key institutional failure from a security standpoint—that there was not enough support for the mission and little continuity between the personnel stationed there on temporary duty, since they rotated in and out of Benghazi so fast. Currently, Congress is looking over how budgets will be allocated and how security can be upgraded, but these measures have already taken place after previous embassy attacks such as the ones in Kenya and Tanzania, and the tangible end result seems ambiguous at best. This is especially true now, given the amount of political posturing being done by those in Congress.
    Immediately after the attack in Libya, the State Department and the Obama White House indicated that the attack occurred because of an inflammatory internet video filmed in America that insulted Islam. The US government later had to retract these statements and reverse course as the controversy around the attacks grew and it became increasingly apparent that there was no protest outside the consulate in Benghazi and that the violence had little to do with some offensive video.
    However, the media frenzy around whether or not there was a protest, whether or not the attack was motivated by a YouTube video, and why security at the consulate was weak—as well as the innuendo about Obama refusing to support the GRS team while they were under attack—played right into the administration’s hands because the truth paints a far grimmer picture.
    The last thing the White House wanted was journalists digging into what was really going on in Libya, namely, secret weapons transfers from Libya to Syria, a program that remains a peripheral issue in the story of the Benghazi attack. More importantly,