LEANING RIGHT-On the evening of 5 April 1986 three people were killed and around 230 injured when La Belle discotheque was bombed in West Berlin. The venue was frequented by United States soldiers, and two of the dead and 79 of the injured were US servicemen.
A bomb placed under a table near the disk jockey’s booth exploded at 1:45 am killing US sergeant Kenneth Ford. A second American sergeant, James Goins, died from injuries two months later and some of the victims were left permanently disabled.
Libya was held responsible for the bombings by the US government and the administration moved.
Retaliatory strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi were ordered for ten days later. These strikes reportedly killed at least 45 people, including Colonel Qaddafi’s daughter.
A 2001 trial in the US found that the Berlin bombings had been “planned by the Libyan secret service and their Embassy.”
The decision to retaliate was made ten minutes after our government learned of the attack. Ordinarily we would have attacked within days but several diplomatic talks with European “partners” took place before the strike was ordered on 14 April. The strike would have occurred earlier and been more direct but we were not granted air-space privileges over France, Spain, and Italy. We had to fly down the coast of Europe entering the Mediterranean through Gibraltar adding 1,300 miles to the mission each way requiring multiple aerial refueling.
In summary, the Reagan administration moved against the attack swiftly and retaliation was decisive.
Fast forward to 11 September 2012 when the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi was attacked by a heavily armed group. The attack began at night in a compound meant to protect the main diplomatic building. A second assault the next morning targeted a nearby CIA annex in a different compound. Four people were killed, including US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Others who died were Information Officer Sean Smith and two embassy security personnel, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALS.
Senior intelligence officials later acknowledged that Doherty and Woods were contracted by the CIA and were part of a Global Response Staff team that provides security to CIA case officers. On 14 September the remains of the slain Americans were returned to the United States. President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton honored the Benghazi victims at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.
The Administration reacted just as swiftly and decisively to the attack as did the administration in 1986. The Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice went on five Sunday morning talk shows.
Her reaction was swift and decisive. She insisted that the attacks on the Benghazi compound sprang from a protest over an obscure anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube, even though the CIA in Libya told Washington within 24 hours that militants were responsible for the attack.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s reaction was swift and decisive. She insisted that Rice appeared in her place because “there are other things I prefer to do on Sunday mornings.”
On 19 September 2013 during the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee were swift and decisive as they left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Wood. Ms Smith is the mother of Sean Smith. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods.
Before these parents testified most of the Democrats on the committee left the room within ten minutes, refusing to even listen to these grieving parents. Only two Democrats members remained in the room.
The members who left the room did so in a swift and decisive manner.
(Kay Martin is an author and a CityWatch contributor. His new book, Along for the Ride, is now available. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 77
Pub: Sept 24, 2013