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The White House Situation Room has a list of what\u2019s called Essential Elements of Friendly Information. That\u2019s the military\u2019s acronym for it, but they would have a similar thing, a critical information list. Certain things go right to the person that\u2019s standing next to the president, both military and civilian leadership. So he would have known within minutes or it\u2019s supposed to be informed within minutes because an ambassador is a four-star equivalent, very high, very important person, you know, represents the president and essentially is the president\u2019s — you know, is the surrogate of the president in that country. So the White House cannot deny that the president knew immediately.<\/p>\n
RUSH: They are. They are.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Well, it\u2019s a bald-faced lie, you know. I\u2019m giving you some inside baseball information —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Look, I believe you. You\u2019re talking about watch desks. That tells me you know what you\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Well, it\u2019s even a little more frustrating than that. So when that message, that code word goes out, flash traffic, that an ambassador is in peril, okay, the —<\/p>\n
RUSH: We have heard this. In our parlance, the way we heard this, Doug, was essentially the panic button was hit. That\u2019s how this was explained to me the first time. Somebody who knew what they were talking about referenced this as a panic button essentially was hit, and that once that happens, everybody that receives it knows what\u2019s going on. There\u2019s no doubt about it. So that\u2019s pretty much true, right?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Right. But it\u2019s even more detailed than that, Rush. What it means is when a code word goes out, there\u2019s standard operating procedures. The geographic combatant commander that\u2019s responsible for Libya would have been part of that message traffic, and his CINC\u2019s In-Extremis Force, which is, you know, a Special Forces unit —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay, let me stop you there for another question, because what a lot of people have been told, the excuse that has been offered, in fact, from Condoleezza Rice on Greta Van Susteren a couple nights ago<\/a>, the impression is, “Well, there\u2019s so much traffic coming in, there\u2019s so many e-mails, so many cables, so many memos, it would take somebody hours to sift through it.” What you\u2019re telling me is that there are systems designed to penetrate all that in a real emergency?<\/p>\n CALLER: Well, there\u2019s three networks, Rush. The e-mails that have been released are unclassified e-mails. On the top secret side, a flash traffic message from the embassy Tripoli to the White House Situation Room, it\u2019s like an IM. I mean, it\u2019s immediately responded to. You have to acknowledge receipt of it. Okay? So it\u2019s immediate. It gets to the person, the watch officer sitting there, boom, flashes on his screen, he has to acknowledge receipt. And then there\u2019s a protocol for who he then sends it to. He physically turns to someone, the senior guy on watch, “This is a critical element of information. POTUS needs to hear this,” and that\u2019s what would have happened. <\/p>\n So no one in the White House can deny that — well, they can deny it, but the fact is the protocol says someone marched their happy little ass up to the senior guy standing next to POTUS and said, “Sir, ambassador in Libya is in peril.” And if he was missing, that is even a higher precedence. And then the chain would have also gone out automatically to the geographic combatant commander, AFRICOM, and he would have then turned to his special operations commander and said, “I want the In-Extremis Force, you know, strip ready in five minutes.” And evidently they were strip ready in Sigonella and they would have the assets to penetrate the airspace, you know, an MC-130 papa, which is a C-130 specially equipped with electronic countermeasures. They didn\u2019t need permission to enter Libyan airspace, okay? <\/p>\n I\u2019m giving you a lot of Inside Baseball stuff, and maybe putting myself in a little peril by doing it, but the In-Extremis Force, they would have been chomping at the bit to do this. It was turned down, POTUS, at his five p.m. Eastern time meeting with the principals, that\u2019s when he put the kibosh on everything. It was a conscious act. It has to be because, you know, the In-Extremis Force is required to be prepared to do In-Extremis non-combatant evacuation operations for its geographic responsibility, the entire continent of Africa. So there\u2019s always somebody ready to go, and the aircraft are always prepared to go. <\/p>\n It\u2019s maddening to say that there was not intelligence. An intelligence guy is not a decision-maker. He\u2019s just some analyst dude that tells the decision-makers this is what we know. Well, the decision-makers who are so risk-averse now need perfect intelligence. They would have had to have, you know, in the calculus of this, to know that, whatever the attacking force was, if I put 15 or 50 or a hundred operators on the ground, you know, they\u2019ll have success. No one knows that. In soft planning, you plan to fail half the time.<\/p>\n RUSH: What about the story we\u2019ve been told that not only was there so much traffic coming in that it was impossible to find the right stuff, which you\u2019ve now explained, but they\u2019re also telling us that the president wasn\u2019t told for a while, and even now, as recently as today, they\u2019re saying that the three most recent e-mails — it sounds like we\u2019re talking about — flash traffic\u2019s not e-mails, right?<\/p>\n CALLER: Flash traffic is digital from station to station.<\/p>\n RUSH: Right. So they\u2019re misleading us left and right. They\u2019re trying to say, “Well, the president –” They will not explain. They will not tell us what happened to the three e-mails and why he didn\u2019t get them or why he wasn\u2019t told or when he knew or what. They\u2019re basically portraying the president as removed from all this.<\/p>\n CALLER: Well, the bottom line is a flash traffic saying that the ambassador is in peril, or, worse, missing, you know, the protocol is for someone to physically contact with a person in the chain that\u2019s supposed to determine what happens next. Now, I wasn\u2019t in the Oval Office so I can\u2019t —<\/p>\n RUSH: Let me ask you, the question came up yesterday that I couldn\u2019t answer, and I need to ask you, just from what you\u2019re saying. This is unreal, but let\u2019s assume they can\u2019t find POTUS, let\u2019s assume he\u2019s just not engaged. Who has trigger authority on a response to something like that? I mean, you say we don\u2019t need permission to send a C-130 in there to disrupt. Who orders it in there, in a situation like this? Who has the authority to order the C-130s wherever they are, Italy, wherever they are, to take action? If you can\u2019t find the president — is the president the only guy that can give that order?<\/p>\n CALLER: No, sir. Okay? Basically in the absence of permissions, okay, you have standing orders. And one of the standing orders to geographic combatant commander is to observe life of American citizens —<\/p>\n RUSH: Exactly. Precisely.<\/p>\n CALLER: And he\u2019s a four-star, you know, he\u2019s in Germany. AFRICOM headquarters is in Germany, and their op-center would have been monitoring this in real time, \u2019cause it\u2019s part of their geographic responsibility. And they would have been going through the different permutations of courses of action of who can get there the quickest. Now, in their geographic area they have Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa, which is in Djibouti. I served there when it was the Joint Special Operations Task Force Crisis Response Element, and we have responsibility for all of CENTCOM and AFRICOM in Africa because at the time there was no AFRICOM. And we had the capacity to get from where we were in Djibouti to Benghazi in about three hours, four hours, depending on what we wanted to take. Now, if we wanted to go in there with a lot of operators, and at the time we had about a hundred operators, it would have taken us probably five hours.<\/p>\n RUSH: Okay, Doug, you\u2019re sitting out here, you obviously are intimately familiar with all this. So what\u2019s going through your mind, A, in real time when you hear about this, and then in subsequent days when you hear the excuses or explanations that have been offered for why no action was taken? I mean, I may be putting you on spot and you can\u2019t share that with us, but I gotta ask you.<\/p>\n CALLER: It stems from Desert One, Rush, it stems from the failure of Desert One during the Iranian hostage rescue. And what commander wants to repeat that, you know. Now, at the lieutenant colonel level, at the colonel level of the In-Extremis Force of all these different headquarters, State Department, everybody was saying, “Let\u2019s go! Let\u2019s get boots on the ground and kick these people\u2019s asses and get our people.” But who makes those decisions? It\u2019s POTUS, V POTUS, State, and Def. And they had a five o\u2019clock Eastern time meeting, and they said no. You know, we\u2019re willing to have the consulate overruled and the embassy overrun — (phone connection goes bad)<\/p>\n RUSH: The fact that they\u2019re afraid of replicating Carter\u2019s boondoggle, that\u2019s not gonna fly with a lot of people.<\/p>\n CALLER: All those memes, you know, are probably in play, but mostly it\u2019s just incompetence and not understanding the principal of you don\u2019t leave anybody behind, okay?<\/p>\n RUSH: Doug, look, I know you\u2019ve stuck your neck out here and you obviously know your stuff intimately well and I really appreciate your call. It\u2019s fabulous to get your input and knowledge on this. Somewhere, somebody refused to make a gutsy call.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: Doug in San Antonio, Texas, kind of blows Leon Panetta out of the water, and Leon Panetta, we had a sound bite earlier, he said, “Well, we didn\u2019t have enough intel. We didn\u2019t know enough going on.” My guess is that we knew everything, we knew it all. That\u2019s what he was basically telling us. We probably had those C-130s — and we talked about these yesterday, these C-130 Hercules equipped to go in and disperse crowds, buzz low, disperse crowds. They\u2019re an hour away in Italy. It\u2019s a seven-hour operation. They probably are able to get the video feed in the cockpit knowing what\u2019s going on. <\/p>\n We are United States of America. We are the world\u2019s lone remaining military superpower. All of these things that we\u2019re being told we\u2019re not capable of doing, we didn\u2019t have the right intel, none of that is true. We\u2019re the United States of America. We have capability beyond that which anybody can conceive, a civilian, anyway. It\u2019s why it\u2019s kept secret. And the story that has been used to explain this is — they\u2019ve willingly said that they\u2019re incompetent. They\u2019ve not used the word. They\u2019ve willingly said that we\u2019re inept. “Well, there were so many e-mails coming in.” We find out that there\u2019s a special code, flash traffic, it\u2019s got top secret code words, you get one of those, it flies to the top, response is required. It has to be walked up to the next person in command. Of course there are procedures like this in place. <\/p>\n It isn\u2019t like you sitting at your computer being inundated with e-mails at five in the afternoon or IMs and not knowing what to do. There are systems here, and they worked. They were in place. This was somebody who refused to make a gutsy call. This is why the families are upset. They find out what\u2019s going on, because they know the role of the president is to defend and protect the people who are in harm\u2019s way in this country, and that did not happen here. You heard him say that there\u2019s a lingering fear that\u2019s resulted in a defensive posture over the failed Carter effort in the deserts of Iran in 1979 to get the hostages out then, even though there have been many successful missions since. But if you doubt that, as some of you might have been hearing him, “Wait a minute, there really –” Remember, now, there are two kinds of generals. <\/p>\n There are warrior generals and there are politically correct corporate climb-the-ladder generals and admirals and what have you. And if you find this hard to believe, “Well, I do, Rush, because it\u2019s the military.” The military is politicized just like anything. Remember the GOP. What is the primary reason the Republican Party is afraid of a conservative presidential nominee? Barry Goldwater\u2019s landslide defeat. It\u2019s what informs them to this day. They can\u2019t get over that. They don\u2019t see the Reagan landslides of \u201980 and \u201984. <\/a> They see Goldwater \u201964. There are plenty of establishment types that do. So what Doug was telling us here is you got enough people in the chain of command who still have lingering fears over the debacle of Jimmy Carter\u2019s rescue attempt in 1979. That sounds hard to believe, but believe me, this guy knew what he was talking about. There can be no doubt about that.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: Somewhere in North Carolina. This is John. Thank you for waiting, sir. Great to have you with us, sir.<\/p>\n CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?<\/p>\n RUSH: Very well. Thank you.<\/p>\n CALLER: It\u2019s an honor to speak with you. I can\u2019t tell how long I\u2019ve been listening. I just wanted to call and tell you that I don\u2019t understand how anybody in the military could support this administration. I currently just got back from Afghanistan, and if I\u2019d-a known what I know now before I left I\u2019d be nervous out of my wits, to know that if I go out on a convoy and I get stranded, that nobody\u2019s coming for me. It\u2019s just unreal.<\/p>\n RUSH: That\u2019s how you take this, huh?<\/p>\n CALLER: That\u2019s exactly how I take it. I don\u2019t see how anybody else could —<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/ObamaPanettaLibya.jpg\"\/)
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