Fitzpatrick: Obama Guilty of Dereliction of Duty

“A DEATH SENTENCE”

by Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III, ©2013

(May 23, 2013) — The first message that came out of Benghazi was “We are under attack and the ambassador‘s life is at risk.”  Greg Hicks got the call and was responding to it.

Everything that people did in response to that first alert was consistent with the urgency of the first message.

Let’s pretend for a minute that the message coming out of Benghazi was, “There’s a missile launch from Benghazi, Libya that’s nuclear-tipped and it’s inbound to the United States.”  Or it’s a message from anywhere in the world where there has been a nuclear-tipped missile launched against the United States.  That message is every bit as serious as the first alert that came out of Benghazi on September 11 which said, “We are under attack; the ambassador’s life is at risk.”

It’s the same message.  It carries the same urgency.  It’s talking about loss of life.

For Mr. Obama to have us believe that he didn’t get that message right away is nothing but a bald-faced lie.  For anybody, especially a military man in uniform, to say that Obama didn’t get that message right away is a lie.  Obama got that message instantly.

Both messages that I’ve just shared with you are the same message:  “Mr. President, we (the United States) are under attack.”  That’s the first message.  That was the message coming out of Benghazi.  That is the same message when somebody launches a missile against the United States:  “Mr. President, we are under attack.”

The U.S. ambassador is the president’s representative everywhere we have one overseas.  When you attack an embassy or people who are in the embassy, you are attacking the United States of America.  Overseas, a U.S. embassy is considered to be sovereign U.S. territory.  So when you attack a U.S. embassy, as a recognized international norm, you are placing the United States of America under attack.

The launch of a missile, any missile, against the United States of America, is every bit an attack against the United States of America.

What Dempsey and Panetta want the American people to believe is that that message didn’t get to Obama, and they’re lying.  “Mr. Obama, the United States is under attack,” and he received it within seconds.  End of story.  Anyone who says anything other than that is lying.

Nobody has wrapped his brain around that yet.

The first messages that came out of Benghazi, and every other message that came out afterward, were “The United States of America is under attack.”  And every message that came out after that was, “We are still under attack.”  That was the message that went to Obama and Hillary Clinton, continuously and unendingly in a stream of communications which didn’t stop until certainly well into the next day and perhaps the day after that.

Panetta’s testimony that he didn’t have enough information to respond is not congruent with what we’ve learned about what other people were doing and how they were responding to the emergency messages that were coming in saying, “We are under attack.”

When Obama sends out a message to the submarines to launch a missile, that message is called an “EAM,” which stands for “Emergency Action Message.”  Those are the communications coming from the White House.  So once Mr. Obama has determined which codes to use, he sends those codes out to the watch platforms that we have around the country.

The message that were coming into the White House were just as much “Emergency Action Messages.”  That’s why they travel with the speed that they do and why we can do this in real time.  We had a drone overhead taking pictures in real time.  Mr. Obama was in receipt of Emergency Action Messages for hours.

Mr. Obama’s physical latitude and longitude that evening are not relevant.  One of the watch officers who is on duty 24/7 is Mr. Obama.  As the putative, fake, resident imposter-in-chief, Mr. Obama is on watch 24/7.  It’s like the captain of a ship – he’s always on watch, ALWAYS.  The fate of the nation rests upon decisions that he must make in real time.

It doesn’t make any difference where he is.  Because he is always on watch, he is always in a position to receive the message, “Mr. President, the United States is under attack.”  He can never be disconnected from that communication stream.  He must always be on watch.  He is always on watch and must always be able to receive that message within seconds.  So for Panetta and Dempsey to suggest that in some way Obama was indisposed – whatever they say about him – what they are not telling the American people is that the president, as commander-in-chief, is the most senior watch officer in the American military command structure.

This is what’s called “continuity of command.”  If the President of the United States is incapacitated for whatever reason, somebody is always going to be in the position to receive the message:  “The United States is under attack.”

For example, when George Bush went into the hospital and was knocked out and was no longer capable of standing his watch, another watch officer stood in his place.  When Mr. Bush was out and could not receive the message, the continuity of command guaranteed that there was always somebody on watch at the top.  That’s what continuity of command is all about.  It doesn’t make any difference where Obama was; he was at the top and at the top of that command structure.  Mr. Obama was on watch.

So when Dan Pfeiffer was asked last Sunday where Mr. Obama was that night, he should have come back to say, “It doesn’t make any difference; it’s beside the point where he was. He is always our commander-in-chief; he is always on watch; he is always in a position to receive an Emergency Action Message and respond to it with the speed of heat.”

This is why I’m using the metaphor of a nuclear attack:  the only person who can authorize a nuclear attack is the President of the United States as Commander-in-Chief.  “Mr. President, we are under nuclear attack; we have an incoming nuclear-tipped missile.  What are we going to do?”  He cannot hand off that decision to a subordinate because none of his subordinates are authorized to open up the nuclear codes.  It’s just him, which comes back to the statements of Rep. Ann Wagner, former ambassador for the United States to Luxembourg, who said that the stand-down order could have come only from Obama.  He was the only one authorized to issue the order.  He cannot delegate that duty.  He cannot turn to someone else and say, “You decide.”

You’ve heard all of the articles and political ads about the 3:00 a.m. phone call.  Mr. Obama got one of those.  This is why people pay such attention to the 3:00 a.m. phone call:  because when that call comes in, there’s only one person, and that’s the person who’s being elected into the presidency, who can respond to that call.

In the situation with Benghazi, he didn’t respond; he issued a “stand-down” order.

For Mr. Obama to delay or hesitate in that moment – that’s the whole reason that the 3:00 a.m. question comes up – will the president react properly?

If there were a nuclear missile that came in and it hit because we failed to shoot it down because of whatever dereliction of duty – if Obama did not properly react in the emergency situation, then he is derelict in the performance of his duties.  That is exactly what is at work right here, and no one that I’ve read or seen has put it in the terms which military people understand, which is that he received an emergency action message; he didn’t have to do anything except to monitor the progress of the contingency plan reaction, perhaps add to the response or do whatever he could to help, to elevate the response – but instead, he had to take the positive action to stop; he had to order those reactions to be stopped.  And he did that instantly.

Gen. Carter Ham was relieved of his command and placed under arrest in seconds.  In the bottom of the Pentagon, just across the Potomac from the White House, Carter Ham was relieved of his command.  That’s what Obama did.  Obama received the message, “Mr. Obama, we are under attack;” generals and admirals who are responding to the attack as they appropriately should, even after Obama told them not to respond.  This is like when you have a nuclear missile coming in; there are going to be people who are going to disobey the order not to shoot that missile down.  Who knows what Obama would do in a circumstance like that?  It is the same kind of dereliction of duty that Mr. Obama is guilty of tonight.

How he can be allowed to remain in the White House is the scandal that he’s faced with right now.  Darrell Issa should be asking the same questions that we are right now.  “Mr. Obama, the United States was under attack.  What did you do when you learned that?”  Play this out with a nuclear scenario:  “Mr. Obama, we have an incoming missile; the United States is under attack.  What did you do?”

Mr. Obama cannot come back with the kinds of answers that he or his subordinates are responding with right now  Nobody seems to sense the urgency or the nature of the message that came in to Obama, that “the United States was under attack; what are we going to do?”

Should Obama be relieved of his duties?  Yes, he should be.  The United States came under attack and he let the attack proceed.  That’s what he did; he allowed the attack to proceed, and succeed.

We’ve been talking about treason for a long time.

“Mr. Obama, there is a nuclear warhead inbound right now; what are we going to do?”  And he does nothing.  He turns to his subordinates, he talks to Jarrett, he talks to Dempsey, he turns to Panetta, and he starts talking about what he’s going to have for breakfast the next morning…”I’ve got a trip to Las Vegas tomorrow…is everything packed and ready to go?  What does my speech look like?”  And then the missile hits.  Do you think that Mr. Obama then is going to be very much concerned about anything other than saving his own political life?  He’s going to be removed from office within moments. 

We’ve just had a city hit by a nuclear weapon because Obama hesitated.  Well, in the same way, we have just had an American ambassador and other lives lost because Mr. Obama allowed it to happen.

Watergate‘s got nothing on this.

“Mr. Obama, we are under attack,” and he came back with, “So what?  Who cares?  Stand down any response.  Allow the attack to proceed.”  That’s what he did.  When he gave his permission for that attack to go forward, he was assuring the deaths of Chris Stevens and the others.  It was a death sentence.