Battle of Benghazi motion picture opens today to the chagrin of Hillary Clinton; Heartbreaking video included
The truth of the attack on Benghazi on September 11, 2012 has been a stone in the right shoe of President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former CIA Director David Petraeus. It is no wonder the stone continues to cause soreness and irritation; they won’t remove it. The usual suspects have seen fit to obfuscate, bewilder and conceal from Congress and the American people what really happened that night. – Special Operations Speaks
There is a lot of bogus information still being spoon-fed to Americans over the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission installation in Benghazi, Libya. Unfortunately, the current White House occupants have manipulated the news media and the American population into giving the administration’s elite a complete pass on the alleged incompetence and dishonesty that’s been uncovered regarding the Battle of Benghazi.
That’s why testimony by contracted security officers, who were part of the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency protection units, is vital in understanding what occurred and why four brave Americans were left dead while leaders in Washington scurried about allegedly covering up their own ineptitude and incompetence.
“It’s a funny thing with this many of this country’s news people: If security contractors are accused of killing innocent civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, there is a media feeding frenzy that lasts for days — weeks even. But if security contractors in a war zone perform admirably, those same reporters couldn’t care less with the story. They still bring up the 2006 Abu Graib story every chance they get, but they complain that Benghazi story of 2012 is old news,” said media critic and political strategist Michael Baker.
Even Republicans in Congress issued inaccurate reports including one that claimed no one ever gave a “stand down order” to CIA contractors and former special forces soldiers who wished to respond to Benghazi and attempt to save Americans from the Islamic terrorists. To their credit the security team members disobeyed their orders and rushed to the scene of the Benghazi massacre.
Much of what’s been reported by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Susan Rice and many others in the Obama administration clearly contradicts what those heroes who were actually on the scene — and not in their beds or pursuing other political activities — observed and experienced.
The well-trained and professional contractors were stationed in buildings near the U.S. Special Mission Compound, which served as a base for U.S. diplomatic staff members and for the U.S. Ambassador to Libya. Four Americans were killed on that fateful day on which people in the United States observed the 11th Anniversary of the 9-11 Terrorist Attacks that left about 3,000 people dead and thousands wounded.
The four Americans, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone “Rone” Woods and Glen Doherty, were left to die by an administration that was arguably “in over their heads.”
Former U.S. Marine intelligence operative and retired police detective Michael Snopes told Conservative Base’s Jim Kouri, “These people were and continue to be political ideologues who are more interested in fighting their enemies at home — Republicans, Tea Party members and conservatives — than in protecting Americans from foreign threats such as radical Islamists.”
“These people — Obama, Clinton, Panetta, Rice, Jarrett and the rest of them — cared more about finding a videotape to blame than in rescuing the Americans under attack. It’s disgusting. And what’s more disgusting is the news media helping these incompetent politicians only because they share the same radical ideology,” Snipes added.
The events experienced by three of the CIA contractors are the grist for the mill of the bestselling book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi” and a movie by Michael Bay “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.” The movie is set to open this week on January 15
Three of the security officers portrayed in the film — Mark “Oz” Geist, Kris “Tanto” Paronto and John “Tig” Tiegen — were interviewed for a release by Special Operations Speaks (SOS), a political action committee representing special operations veterans in the U.S. armed forces, intelligence community and law enforcement agencies.
Here are some of the questions asked and the answers given by men who were not only eyewitnesses but participants in what should be called The Battle of Benghazi.
Question: Have you seen the film and how close to the book is it?
Oz: I think it’s as close as you can get. And the fact that it took 13 hours and 300 odd pages and was condensed into a two hour movie, it’s exactly what it should be. Someone asked me a question if there was anything else that could make it better and I can’t think of any thing. I’ve been thinking about it for two days and I still can’t. It kept to the spirit of the book.
Q: Were you consultants on the film to ensure its accuracy?
Tanto: Yeah, we were involved when the script first came out — reading it and putting our input in. We were involved with set design. And each of us had a week overseas along with Mitchell Zuckoff [author of “13 Hours”] as well. You know the actual one of us who can write. [laughs]
So we were heavily involved from the get-go and always being on call for phone conversations [for the film]. And each of us spent time with the people that played us in the movie. And all of them we’ve actually become friends with that the guys that portrayed us… We’ll call them up and have a beer with them if we’re in the same town.
Q: What movies do you think are accurate depictions of the military or combat?
Tig: “American Sniper” was a good one. “Lone Survivor” was really good.
Tanto: A good heroism movie from Vietnam — I wasn’t in Vietnam of course — was “We Were Soldiers.” What I liked about “We Were Soldiers” was how you feel like when you’re leaving. That’s on a bigger scale of how the families are back home and how they were dealing with the deaths. And how the government was being wholly unprepared to explain deaths. Of course being [an Army] Ranger, I also liked “Black Hawk Down.” I think they did a good job technical on that one getting down the mannerisms of what Rangers and Deltas are like.
Q: How important to you is it that the whole story about Benghazi be told?
Oz: What made us write the book in the first place wasn’t that the story wasn’t being told but that it had got spun into a 100 different directions by people on the right and the left for their own personal gain.
We’re not about being public figures or at least we weren’t before this. When you would see misrepresentations of the ambassador [J. Christopher Stevens] having been drugged through the streets and raped and mutilated — that never happened. And it’s only right that his family knows the truth about what happened to him. And that needed to be told but it wasn’t being told because the story got hijacked. So we felt the only way to do this was to put it into a book because we didn’t want it to get spun again if we came out on the talk shows. Once it’s on paper, it’s there forever.
Q: What parts of your training do you feel proved essential while under siege?
Tig: All of it. I mean, the more training you can get the better off you are. You can react a lot faster. I mean there wasn’t one essential thing. All of our training came into play that night.
Tanto: I think what I’ve taken back from training is: There are times in basic training that when you’re a private and then you go through Ranger school that you face—I don’t want to use the word hazing because it’s a bad word that doesn’t fit the context — and you need to have those challenges.
I think for all us in those earlier days, you could get thrashed by your drill sergeant and that helped us. What we call it is embracing the suck. You embrace it — it sucks but you love it because you’ve been put through it over and over. So it mentally prepares you and you come out on top of it.
So that’s why if you read the book, there’s also a lot of humor going on that night and that’s because we’ve learned how to embrace the suck — that’s the best way I can term it.
Q: What are your thoughts about the reports in Congress about the attacks?
Tanto: I’d ask Congress: Were you there? Did you see what happened on the ground? Did you see us fight that night? Were you there when our friends got blown up in front of our faces? Were you there when we were pulling lifeless bodies out of the burning building? You weren’t. So all I can say is that we’re torn by what’s going on and we’re reliving it everyday so that people can get the truth out there. It’s not easy to do.
I don’t want it to get turned into this big political agenda thing which is what it has been turned into. So we’re trying to bring it back to show the heroism. We’re trying to bring it back to show that there were a lot of sacrifices going on. There were several huge firefights and guys did amazing things and guys were willing to sacrifice themselves to save others… I think Hilary’s gotten enough play on this. Either negative or positive, she gets talked about over this and we’re done with that.
Q: How do you pay homage to your friends and colleagues who were killed in the attack?
Tig: We’re kind of going around telling the story [about what happened], and by the way we’re telling the story we’re keeping them alive. Just keep honoring them [by telling] what they did and what they went through. We don’t sugarcoat anything that happened —how they died or how they were taken care of afterward. That’s how you honor the guys — you just have to tell the truth about them.
