Jack Kelly Sunday

With this week's column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, columnist Jack Kelly tries, yet again, to dance the Benghazi dance.

Didn't he realize that he was in trouble with his beginning sentence?

Here it is:

We used to expect more of our presidents than that they not have been indicted for felonies.

Yea like waterboarding, eh Jack?

Remember when Jack Kelly defended the use of waterboarding?  That was only 3 or so years ago.   Here's what Jack wrote wa-a-a-ay back then:

Torture, according to Merriam-Webster, is "the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing or wounding) to punish, coerce or afford sadistic pleasure." Federal law defines torture as "severe mental or physical pain," and mental pain as "prolonged mental harm." Because waterboarding inflicts neither physical pain nor prolonged mental harm, it isn't torture, said the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration.

Interesting he went to the dictionary first, rather than international law - but whatever.  Also interesting that he omitted the first definitions he found in his Merriam-Webster.  They are:

1. a: anguish of body or mind
   b: something that causes agony or pain

Anyone want to guess how much agony and/or waterboarding causes?  If there's any, then Jack lied to all of us 3 years ago about waterboarding.

Then there's International Law (a law signed by President Reagan and ratified by the US Senate) that states:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

And yet, Jack Kelly said waterboarding isn't torture.

Why should we trust him on anything?

But let's move on to this current perspiring pile of fetid feculence.

After pointing out the "rejected pleas" for more security at Benghazi, Jack amplifies his argument with this:

“This was a suicide mission,” a security officer assigned to the consulate told a superior in Washington. “There was a very good chance that everybody here was going to die.”

“Everybody back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in Benghazi,” responded a diplomatic security desk officer. “Nobody cares, and nobody is going to care until somebody does die.”

Which is curious because while he probably got this quotation from Breitbart (or some such right wing "news" source), if you took a look at the Breitbart piece, the link is to the Democratic Benghazi report (the one issued a few days before the Republican report).

The source of quote has been named "Agent B" and did you know Agent B wasn't posted at Benghazi at the time of the attack?  Did you know he was there about 10 months earlier concerning the security situation there about a year before the Benghazi attacks?

If that's even something Jack Kelly knew, it was something he decided to tell you.  Think about the two possibilities.  Either he didn't know the context of the quotation he was using (bad, Jack!) or he did and he chose not to tell us (very bad, Jack!).

Not only that, but the Democratic report follows up on those concerns:

The Select Committee did not interview the DS Desk Officer referred to by Agent B, but that official was interviewed by another congressional committee in August 2013. Although he never described that specific conversation in his interview, the DS Desk Officer confirmed that Deputy Assistant Secretary Lamb was responsible for the decision to provide only three DS agents.

Both Agent A and Agent B left Benghazi in 2011 before their security requests were fulfilled. Following the approval of the December 2011 memo extending the Department’s presence in Benghazi, the Department funded and implemented a number of these physical security requests.[Emphasis added.]

Huh. Jack didn't tell you that either, did he?

Then there's this from Jack:

The Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team in Rota, Spain, probably could have gotten there before former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed. But its departure was delayed while officials, including Ms. Clinton, bickered over whether the Marines should wear their uniforms. The Marines changed clothes four times.

Look carefully at that passage.  Nothing about Sean Smith or Ambassador Stevens, right?  And were there other delays than the Marines changing clothes?

Let's to to the Republican report on just this subject.

Page 150:

One of the FAST platoons ordered to deploy by the Secretary arrived in Tripoli at 8:56 p.m. local time [2:56 p.m. in Washington D.C.] the evening of September 12, nearly 24 hours after the attacks began. 456 As military witnesses have posited on many occasions, the mission of a FAST Platoon is not hostage rescue but to “put that layer of steel around a critical infrastructure of the United States to say to our enemy, ‘ Don’t mess [with us].'"

Wait, the FAST platoon is not a hostage rescue team?  But didn't Jack Kelly, former "National Security" correspondent at the P-G just say that the team "probably could have gotten there" before Woods and Doherty were killed?  What for, if not as a rescue team?

But let's go deeper into the timeline, shall we?  Let's see if what Jack so casually wrote was even possible.  The attack begins shortly before 10pm (Libya time) on September 11, 2012.

Then:

10:30 p.m.: Stevens and State Department information management officer Sean Smith have taken refuge in the main building in the compound, behind a fortified door with metal bars that keeps the attackers from breaking in. But the militants set fire to the building. Within minutes, Stevens and Smith are overwhelmed by smoke.

Then:

1 a.m.: A U.S. rescue team arrives in Benghazi from Tripoli, Libya’s capital. Nearly 30 Americans are rescued from the compound. Shortly thereafter, Stevens is taken to Benghazi Medical Center and pronounced dead on arrival, according to a hospital source.

And then:

4 a.m.: Gunmen launch an assault using mortars against the CIA annex. Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, both former Navy SEALs, are killed.

And the Senate Select Committee report of 2014 states (page 31):

Sometime between midnight and 2:00a.m. Benghazi time, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta verbally ordered two Marine Fleet Antiterrorism Security Teams (or "FAST platoons") to deploy from their base in Rota, Spain, to Libya.

Between 2 and 4 hours before the mortar attack that eventually kills Woods and Doherty at the CIA annex.

One team was to go to Benghazi, the second to Tripoli.  However it would take 96 hours for the Tripoli team to arrive.

However:

Because all Americans were evacuated from Benghazi before the first FAST platoon could arrive, it was diverted to protect the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and arrived at 8:56p.m. Tripoli time, 011 September 12, 2012.

You'll note that the Post timeline says that at 1am a rescue team from Tripoli was able to secure 30 at the compound.  This would be within an hour (in either direction) of Secretary Panetta ordering the FAST platoon to deploy.

Now take a look at this from the Marine Corps Times:

The FAST Marines, who were based out of Rota, Spain, were ready to leave for Libya at 5:45 a.m. local time the morning after the attack, the team's platoon commander told the committee. The Marines waited six hours for Air Force C-130s to arrive in Spain, but then they were delayed on the ground. Rota is about 2,000 miles from Benghazi.

That's an hour and 45 minutes after the mortar attack that kills Woods and Doherty.  They were ready to go but they were still 2000 miles away.  And then they had to wait six hours for the C-130s to arrive.  If my arithmetic is correct the earliest they could have departed Rota was almost 8 hours after the mortar attack began.  And if a C-130 cruises about 300 mph, it would still have to take more than 6 hours to get to Libya.

Does retired Marine Jack Kelly really believe that they "could have gotten there" in time to save Woods and Doherty were it not for a 3 hour delay regarding uniforms?  Does he think that the C-130 is some sort of time machine?

Do I really need to beat him down any more over this ridiculous column?  I'm feeling kinda guilty at this point so I'll just stop except to ask this question yet again:

Doesn't anyone at the Post-Gazette (where this poop is published) fact-check Jack Kelly ?

If they are, they're doing a crappy job of it.

Jack, see ya next week maybe?