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You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Gun nuts / I’d Have Gone For the Tactical Nuke

I’d Have Gone For the Tactical Nuke

by John Cole|  October 26, 20126:03 pm| 107 Comments

This post is in: Gun nuts, Clown Shoes

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The Confederate Yankee, aka Bob Owens, aka Gun Counter Gomer, the von Clausewitz of Chigger Creek, is very upset that we did not use AC130 gunships on the Benghazi consulate:

An AC-130U flies in a counter-clockwise “pivot turn” around the target, with the weapons all aimed out the left side of the aircraft.

There are two state-of-the-art fire-control systems (FCSs) in a AC-130U, using television sensors,infrared sensors, and synthetic aperture strike radar. These fire control systems can see through the dark of night, clouds, and smoke.

The two FCSs on the AC-130U control a 25mm Gatling gun for area suppression, a precision 40mm cannon, and a 105mm cannon which can engage hard targets.

What this means is that we have the forces in the air and on the ground to have stopped the attack at any point, eliminating the terrorists and saving American lives.

Yeah. That would have been great. Deploy a gatling gun, 40 mm depleted uranium rounds, and 105 mm cannon rounds on a crowd mixed with friendlies.

At some point, you might just wonder if maybe the military had a reason for not turning Benghazi into fucking My Lai village.

Obligatory link.

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Reader Interactions

107Comments

  1. 1.

    owlbear1

    October 26, 2012 at 6:09 pm

    Bob assumes every bullet checks ID beforehand.

  2. 2.

    General Stuck

    October 26, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    Our wingnuts are somethin’ like a farce of nature once they set their teeth into a juicy meme. And the more blood and guts brought to bear in the sordid imaginings, the better.

  3. 3.

    Keith

    October 26, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    No F-22 stealth plane?

  4. 4.

    Comrade Dread

    October 26, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    Hey, I’m sure he’s had ample experience with that aircraft and those guns playing Modern Warfare on his XBox360.

    And, you know, if we happened to hit a few innocent civilians, they’d just respawn after 30 seconds.

  5. 5.

    IM

    October 26, 2012 at 6:12 pm

    A Gatling gun!

    But of course: Whatever happens we have got, the Gatling gun and they have not

  6. 6.

    Citizen Alan

    October 26, 2012 at 6:12 pm

    At this point, I really do assume that every Republican is a psychopath who can only experience joy when he sees other people suffering. I haven’t interacted with a single Republican either online or in real life that I haven’t considered to be an inhuman monster. Five days before Halloween and eleven days before the election, and I feel like I’m in a Roger Corman film surrounded by The Crazies.

  7. 7.

    Steven

    October 26, 2012 at 6:12 pm

    Geez, what a sad punk. Joystick warriors of Bob’s type think phrases like “synthetic aperture strike radar” are magic words that mean the good guys automatically win. Worst kind of Tom Clancy wannabe. He was probably wearing his AC-130U ball cap while he typed that.

  8. 8.

    The Other Chuck

    October 26, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    Typical insecure male behavior, showing off encyclopaedic knowledge of all the tech details of military hardware. Probably half of it is bullshit, but that doesn’t matter cuz WOLVERINES!

    Fucks sake, why do I have to have so many assholes representing my gender and race both? I mean yeah, I remember being like that too … when I was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    October 26, 2012 at 6:14 pm

    I’d Have Gone For the Tactical Nuke

    Terrorist-coddler. What’s wrong with using a wee little ICBM to level the entire city?

  10. 10.

    Svensker

    October 26, 2012 at 6:16 pm

    Why, if we’d used Bob’s Plan all along, there would have been no US casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan! Dang nab it. Alert the generals, immediately!

  11. 11.

    General Stuck

    October 26, 2012 at 6:17 pm

    Daisy Cutter would have killed everything assuring total victory. And no messy fallout complaints.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2012 at 6:17 pm

    Does this dipshit have any idea what that gatling gun is capable of doing…. Aw fuck it. No, he does not, and, even if he did, he wouldn’t care.

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    October 26, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    25mm Gatling gun for area suppression

    Which means, of course, spraying bullets all over the bloody place. Which is fine when you’re, you know, suppressing a target at some enemy encampment out in the middle of nowhere. It’s perhaps slightly less optimal for an urban environment where one can’t easily distinguish targets from the people who just happen to be in the vicinity.

  14. 14.

    Redshift

    October 26, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    Whaddaya mean “a crowd mixed with friendlies”? It’s an Arab country; there are only two kinds of people — Americans and terrorists.

  15. 15.

    Liberty60

    October 26, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    @The Other Chuck:

    Thats my sense- the mark of a true Keyboard Kommando is the Ralphie-esque faux-military jargon. (“A Red Ryder 200 shot Range Model Carbine Action Air Rifle”)

    Its supposed to sound hard edged and gritty, but it sounds more like Travis Bickel interrogating himself in front of a mirror.

  16. 16.

    trollhattan

    October 26, 2012 at 6:20 pm

    This is why we keep Tom Clancy out of the Situation Room.

  17. 17.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 26, 2012 at 6:21 pm

    @dmsilev:

    What’s wrong with using a wee little ICBM to level the entire city?

    Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    October 26, 2012 at 6:21 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Am guessing he watched that Wilikeaks Iraq Heli attack video shouting, “Fuck yeah, get that photographer, the bastard. Nailed him!”

  19. 19.

    SatanicPanic

    October 26, 2012 at 6:23 pm

    on a crowd mixed with friendlies

    Wingnuts would disagree that Libya is home to any friendlies

  20. 20.

    MattR

    October 26, 2012 at 6:23 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: If you want to be absolutely positive, the only real solution is destroying the entire planet.

  21. 21.

    The Other Chuck

    October 26, 2012 at 6:25 pm

    @MattR: That kind of explains everything about wingnuts now, come to think of it.

  22. 22.

    delosgatos

    October 26, 2012 at 6:25 pm

    The comments on that thread are a condensed sludge of disgusting and vile wingnut posturing idiocy par for the course.

  23. 23.

    mellowjohn

    October 26, 2012 at 6:26 pm

    sweet jumpin’ jeebus, you can never kill enough brown people to make some folks happy, can ya?

  24. 24.

    dmsilev

    October 26, 2012 at 6:27 pm

    @mellowjohn: They work on the age-old theory of “Kill them all; God will know his own”.

  25. 25.

    JWL

    October 26, 2012 at 6:29 pm

    I was 14, and my parents subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chron was one of the very few newspapers in the country that chose to publish Seymour Hersh’s account of the massacre at My Lai. It was a turning point in my life, in that I began to think of war & country for the first time as an adult… or leastwise, in adult terms.

  26. 26.

    Dave S.

    October 26, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    @Steven: I suspect he was also typing that one-handed.

  27. 27.

    Steven

    October 26, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    @dmsilev: “Area suppression” is what Bob calls killing cockroaches with an old boot.

  28. 28.

    Svensker

    October 26, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    @delosgatos:

    God.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    I do love his serene confidence that, in the middle of the night with smoke everywhere, the gunners in the airplane would easily be able to tell the difference between the consulate staff and the attackers.

    Nope, no recipe for disaster here! After all, in all of the movies Gomer has seen, the bullets only hit the bad guys, so no harm, no foul.

  30. 30.

    SatanicPanic

    October 26, 2012 at 6:35 pm

    @delosgatos: No kidding. What I gather is that Obama refused to do anything because he declared the GWOT is over and now he doesn’t want to fight any muslims because that would be an admission the GWOT isn’t over. I must have missed that particular Mission Accomplished photo op.

  31. 31.

    FlipYrWhig

    October 26, 2012 at 6:35 pm

    Doesn’t Bob “Cornfed Yankme” Owens work at a gun store? Or is that just a running gag? I don’t know him apart from his being a long-running subject of mockery at Sadly, No.

  32. 32.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 26, 2012 at 6:38 pm

    @MattR:

    If you want to be absolutely positive, the only real solution is destroying the entire planet.

    I was reading Richard Rhodes’ book Dark Sun about the development of the H-bomb, and he quotes a physicist who once was visting Edward Teller and saw a chart on the blackboard in the latter’s office listing various hypothetical weapons and the delivery systems required for them. Parenthetically, this was during the period before the Teller-Ulam design, when Teller was still working on his Classical Super design and the modelling calculations they were grinding out at Los Alamos suggested it wouldn’t work unless you made it so big that it would weigh thousands of tons and a gigantic barge would be needed to float it into place; Teller actually proposed that the US might have to sneak his towed-barge weapon thru the Baltic and detonate it in the waters off Leningrad, with a proposed yield of 1,000 megatons.

    Anyway, on Teller’s chalkboard was a list of various superweapons, to be delivered by artillery, by bomber, by barge, etc.

    The last entry at the bottom listed: “delivery: detonate in backyard”.

  33. 33.

    SatanicPanic

    October 26, 2012 at 6:38 pm

    Nutpicking the comments there:

    This was a planned hostage-taking gone bad. Ambassador Stevens was to be taken hostage and Obama would be the hero ‘rescuer’ right before the election, to get the ‘Osama effect’ bounce in his campaign. This is why security was drawn-down before the attack. The ‘YouTube video’ is now known to be a lie and was created by the 0bama regime as cover to explain a protest leading to Stevens’ being taken hostage.

    The response:

    Kevin you are totally crazy that could never happen. I’m thinking . . . thinking . . . Never mind. I can’t think of any evidence that contradicts your theory.

    AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  34. 34.

    ? Martin

    October 26, 2012 at 6:39 pm

    Nothing says ‘our diplomatic door is open’ like the gunship from hell circling above your consulate at 2000 feet.

  35. 35.

    Maude

    October 26, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    Uh, the attack was sudden. Did Bob have a time machine to go back before it happened?

  36. 36.

    max

    October 26, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    Deploy a gatling gun, 40 mm depleted uranium rounds, and 105 mm cannon rounds on a crowd mixed with friendlies.

    In an area chock full of friendlies on account of it being more or less in the middle of Benghazi. Save them from Qaddafi’s (that guy is going to be dead for ten years before the world, including me, settles on a consistent spelling) jets bombarding the city from the sky by bombarding the city from the sky with out aircraft! NEAT! Good plan! Win those hearts and minds!

    No need to wait for the troopers they were sending in from Tripoli.

    At some point, you might just wonder if maybe the military had a reason for not turning Benghazi into fucking My Lai village.

    At some point you gotta wonder if any of our moderate Republican friends are going to notice that their friend’s are now arguing over committing a massacre of civvies based on the loss of four guys. I mean it explains the whole ‘nuke the Mideast’ thing, but I’m not seeing how this works with Moderate Mitt.

    max
    [‘How do they react to car wrecks, I wonder?’]

  37. 37.

    Soonergrunt

    October 26, 2012 at 6:42 pm

    My God.

  38. 38.

    Maude

    October 26, 2012 at 6:44 pm

    @Soonergrunt:
    Can’t wait to hear what he says we should do in Syria.

  39. 39.

    Sly

    October 26, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    Note to Keyboard Commandos: Actual military operations do not resemble Call of Duty.

  40. 40.

    Nylund

    October 26, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    Why is it that so many conservative bloggers think rattling off technical trivia about weapons is a substitute for having a rational thought about foreign relations?

    All I can think of is they have really small dicks and think that they can trick people into thinking otherwise if they become weapons nerds.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 6:48 pm

    @SatanicPanic:

    I do think that there’s still more to the story that going to come out after the investigations are over. The Egypt connection is very intriguing and more layers keep being revealed. I’m sure there are a whole lot of people in MENA who would love to see the Egyptian government discredited.

    ETA: The fact that the Egyptian government decided to step all over their own dicks for the first few days after the attacks did not help their credibility.

  42. 42.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    October 26, 2012 at 6:50 pm

    Good, I’m not the only person who thought “they’re really whining that we didn’t call in a military strike on civilians that might include innocent people”?

    This is why the Republicans need to be out of power. If the Republicans had any leadership at all, they’d be stomping this down. “Are you fuckers *INSANE*? Don’t you realize we *can’t* do shit like that? Okay, maybe the administration fucked up[1], but are you fuckers *INSANE*, questioning a decision not to launch a full military strike in a friendly country?”

    [1] There’s no evidence that the administration “fucked up” though perhaps some new lessons will be learned. Still, I can’t expect a hypothetical Republican leader to fail to throw in some kind of dig while scolding Republican loyalists.

  43. 43.

    blingee

    October 26, 2012 at 6:50 pm

    imho all these gun/war freaks are overcompensating for feelings of insecurity. Small penis syndrome or maybe just plain old cowards.

  44. 44.

    JWL

    October 26, 2012 at 6:51 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Teller’s grip on the viability of a stealth barge puts me in mind of those Brits who feared the construction of The Chunnel as providing an invasion route to their island. Laughably, the simple-simon deduction concerning a single torpedo from the Royal Navy never entered their beautiful minds.

  45. 45.

    RSA

    October 26, 2012 at 6:52 pm

    There are two state-of-the-art fire-control systems (FCSs) in a AC-130U, using television sensors,infrared sensors, and synthetic aperture strike radar… The two FCSs on the AC-130U control a 25mm Gatling gun for area suppression, a precision 40mm cannon, and a 105mm cannon which can engage hard targets.

    …says someone who’s never been a soldier? Wow. When I was a kid, I once put together a list of all the superpowers I wanted, based on the comic books I read, but I kinda outgrew that.

  46. 46.

    MikeJ

    October 26, 2012 at 6:57 pm

    @RSA: “precision 40mm cannon” is sort of the give away.

  47. 47.

    General Stuck

    October 26, 2012 at 6:57 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    One thing that is becoming clearer, or at least suggestive, is that the Benghazi Mission, or consulate, was more a cover for some covert CIA spook stuff. I’ve heard several theories, such as they were training rebels from Syria and funneling arms there, maybe. But I agree, there are layers to this story, and likely partly why the CIA and WH have been bouncing around so many stories.

  48. 48.

    azlib

    October 26, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    And I am sure we had an AC130 deployed near Benghazi at the time or was it already flying cover over the consulate in anticipation of the attack? And as others have already said, the AC130 is not a very discriminating weapon. What a moron.

  49. 49.

    HumboldtBlue

    October 26, 2012 at 7:00 pm

    I was in the infantry. I was fucking good at it too. Gifted, actually, a natural motherfucking fit. I had practiced from a young age, particularly against Rebels in gray and Nazis in feldgrau in my backyard

    That’s what kind of made me think — do I want to be really good at this killing/fighting/scouting shit (not to mention the fact that infantrymen have a battlefield life of 0.03 seconds or some shit) or maybe just maybe, in a time when my nation was not fighting rebellious Virginians or Rommel’s panzergrenadiers, should I do something else.

    I did something else and unlike this fantasizing fuck knuckle I knew I never wanted to be in combat, near combat or even have the chance to be in a theater that featured combat.

    That’s what this bitch can’t understand and he’s so much of a fucking coward, a stark, craven, gun-licking coward, that as pointed out above, he memorizes the details of machines specifically designed for killing and then basks in the glow of never actually having to find out the horror of war.

    Plus, ol’ Bob aint let me comment on his site for years now after I challenged him to a DD214 showdown.

  50. 50.

    Jay in Oregon

    October 26, 2012 at 7:05 pm

    @Steven:
    Never mind, @Dave S. beat me to it.

  51. 51.

    WWStBreitbartD

    October 26, 2012 at 7:07 pm

    Benghazi into fucking My Lai village.

    So trying to fight back against armed men (w/RPGs for a spontaneous protest during the night) trying to kill our ambassador is the same as massacring unarmed civilians.

    BTW our ambassador and 3 others are dead. How was that done by peaceful unarmed friendly civilians? If the crowd was “mixed with friendlies” why didn’t they try to help?

    No wonder you get outraged with a homeowner shoots someone who is breaking into their home.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2012 at 7:08 pm

    @Soonergrunt: Easily the best comment on this topic.

  53. 53.

    g

    October 26, 2012 at 7:10 pm

    So our guys died in burning buildings. So bombarding the compound with guns would have saved them exactly how?

  54. 54.

    g

    October 26, 2012 at 7:12 pm

    @WWStBreitbartD: Well, to take your analogy, to its logical conclusion, it would be like the homeowner blowing up his house with in order to thwart the intruder.

  55. 55.

    Chyron HR

    October 26, 2012 at 7:13 pm

    @WWStBreitbartD:

    Why didn’t Mitt Romney save Ambassador Stevens? I mean, since he literally claims to be the Messiah foretold in the holy Mormon prophecies, shouldn’t he have some kind of magic White Horse powers?

  56. 56.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2012 at 7:14 pm

    @g: Duh, cannons.

  57. 57.

    The Republic of Stupidity

    October 26, 2012 at 7:15 pm

    I’m surprised Gomer Von Clauswitz wasn’t questioning why we didn’t send in Ironman while we’re at it…

  58. 58.

    SatanicPanic

    October 26, 2012 at 7:15 pm

    @General Stuck: But Republicans would never compromise any CIA project or out any agents. Except when convenient.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 7:17 pm

    @WWStBreitbartD:

    So trying to fight back against armed men (w/RPGs for a spontaneous protest during the night) trying to kill our ambassador is the same as massacring unarmed civilians.

    The funniest part is that you think having an AC130 gunship fire into the consulate would magically kill only the bad guys and not the consulate staff that you were supposedly trying to rescue.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 7:19 pm

    @g:

    So bombarding the compound with guns would have saved them exactly how?

    Because shooting into the compound would only kill the bad guys and leave the consulate staff unharmed. Duh. It’s like you never played a videogame or something.

  61. 61.

    pseudonymous in nc

    October 26, 2012 at 7:20 pm

    Shorter Mah-Grill-Done-Got-Done: fap-fap-fap-fap.

  62. 62.

    g

    October 26, 2012 at 7:21 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: well, yeah. thanks.

  63. 63.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2012 at 7:24 pm

    @g: Hey, it is how I understood Gomer’s thought process to work. I’m not endorsing it. There are planaria with higher order reasoning skills.

  64. 64.

    encephalopath

    October 26, 2012 at 7:25 pm

    Because Libya with totally be OK with us flying gunships over their country launched from our base in… wait, where is Libya again?

  65. 65.

    Emma

    October 26, 2012 at 7:27 pm

    @Mnemosyne: Nah. He just likes the thrills he gets from sitting in the basement with Cheetos and Diet Coke and killing imaginary bad guys. Not that he would ever enlist, mind you. He’s a Chuck Norris warrior.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    @Emma:

    Hey, I don’t look down on people who spend their time in the basement killing imaginary bad guys — that’s how my brother spent much of their misspent youth.

    It’s when those people think that their videogame experience is somehow translatable to real life that I start to point and laugh, like i do with the guys who become convinced they’re better guitarists than, say, Eddie Van Halen because they have top scores on “Guitar Hero.”

  67. 67.

    Paul

    October 26, 2012 at 7:33 pm

    Can you imagine if we had done what this idiot rants that we should have done; what if his suggested action would have turned this into a complete massacre with thousands (mostly innocent unarmed people) people dead?!

    Can you imagine the outcry from people like that that Obama overreacted etc etc?

  68. 68.

    nellcote

    October 26, 2012 at 7:34 pm

    Gun Counter Gomer VS Glenn Greenwald

    Now there’s a debate!

  69. 69.

    SFAW

    October 26, 2012 at 7:35 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    The funniest part is that you think having an AC130 gunship fire into the consulate would magically kill only the bad guys and not the consulate staff that you were supposedly trying to rescue.

    Well, see, “WhatWouldSatanBreitbartKill” knows that the latest AC130s have super-secret Gatling guns with NEW! color-sensing technology, thus able to kill only brown people. I’ve seen a demonstration: the round is speeding toward the target, and when it gets into range, the color-sensing tech kicks in, and I’ve actually seen the bullets stop in mid-air – complete with brake-screech-like sound effects – and turn this way and that, and then acquire a brown target, and then do its intended job.

    “WWSatanBreitbartK” must have pretty high clearance, because I was only allowed to see the demo because I have super-dee-duper (a/k/a “Barney”) clearance. Can’t get much higher than that.

  70. 70.

    R. Porrofatto

    October 26, 2012 at 7:37 pm

    @delosgatos:
    Yeah the comments are par for the course all right. Much drooling bluster and weapon stroking with the usual Obama treason stuff. They actually think that shredding a few hundred citizens of a country we are not at war with would make us safer. What what they really want is to feel some vicarious respect for the power of our bad-ass weapons from the Ayrab at the 7-11.

  71. 71.

    SatanicPanic

    October 26, 2012 at 7:38 pm

    @Mnemosyne: I’m convinced actual guitar playing ability is an impediment to being good at guitar hero. I assume actual combat experience is an impediment to magical thinking about weapons.

  72. 72.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    October 26, 2012 at 7:39 pm

    Isn’t that the same thing Qaddafi threatened to do to Benghazi?

  73. 73.

    Yutsano

    October 26, 2012 at 7:40 pm

    @encephalopath: Well theoretically they could be launched from Aviano or an aircraft carrier. Both happened to be not too far away from the area. It’s still a massively stupid idea. Sledgehammers and gnats here folks.

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    October 26, 2012 at 7:40 pm

    @R. Porrofatto:

    What what they really want is to feel some vicarious respect for the power of our bad-ass weapons from the Ayrab at the 7-11.

    Who’s from Gujurat or Mumbai or Delhi. But he’s brown, so he must be an Ay-rab.

  75. 75.

    Davis X. Machina

    October 26, 2012 at 7:41 pm

    I hope he came after typing that. Seems rather a waste if he didn’t…

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    October 26, 2012 at 7:42 pm

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Isn’t that the same thing Qaddafi threatened to do to Benghazi?

    Maybe, but he was a Ay-rab, and we’re ‘Muricans, so it ain’t the same. We’s allowed to do it.

  77. 77.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    October 26, 2012 at 7:43 pm

    Gun Counter Gomer:
    25mm Gatling Gun
    (Fap fap fap)
    40mm precision cannon
    (Fap fappety fap)
    105mm cannon
    (Fapfapfapfapfap Touchdown Wolverines!)

  78. 78.

    rick moran

    October 26, 2012 at 7:44 pm

    Yeah. That would have been great. Deploy a gatling gun, 40 mm depleted uranium rounds, and 105 mm cannon rounds on a crowd mixed with friendlies.

    The firefight took place at the CIA annex about a mile from the consulate. “A crowd mixed with friendlies?” What “crowd?” Who is hanging around when RPG’s, automatic weapons fire, and mortar rounds are being directed at a building? Not too many “friendlies” I would imagine.

    Unless you’re talking about that spontaneous protest against that anti-Muslim film – oh, wait…

    This was a 7 hour firefight and the 2 CIA guys – who apparently disobeyed orders and rushed to the annex to help – weren’t killed until near the end of the attack. Panetta may very well be correct about “Monday morning quarterbacking” but we don’t know that because the story keeps changing.

    There are several other reasons besides “friendlies” getting killed why sending assets to help would have been the wrong call. The political situation in Libya is dicey. Prime Minister Zeidan is faced with a near impossible task of riding herd on factions that range from radical Islamist to secular democrats. Allowing American military to operate on the sovereign territory of Libya would have given his political enemies potent ammunition.

    Local militias assigned to protect our diplomats would almost certainly have gotten angry if we sent in a special forces unit to save our people. The fallout from that might have made it even more dangerous in the aftermath of the attack.

    It was a 50-50 call and for whatever reason it went against our diplomats. What I want is a clear, concise, honest explanation. An accurate timeline would do nicely. It can’t be that hard, can it?

    Maybe less than two weeks before an election, it is.

  79. 79.

    g

    October 26, 2012 at 7:47 pm

    Look, isn’t it cute when the little minions come flying in like that?

  80. 80.

    General Stuck

    October 26, 2012 at 7:58 pm

    @rick moran:

    It was a 50-50 call and for whatever reason it went against our diplomats. What I want is a clear, concise, honest explanation. An accurate timeline would do nicely. It can’t be that hard, can it?

    Sure you do. Just like the rest of the fulminating nuts on right wings blogs melting down with psychotic speculations. And, please, neither you nor your right wing brethren gives one shit about state department people getting killed in a tragic attack. You want Obama’s scalp to win the election. Fucking period. That shit won’t fly here.

    That said, there are some important questions to ask and have answered, per an investigation that is going on and these things always take time. It should be obvious that someone misread the situation of instability for a consulate in Benghazi, that looks more like a CIA operation rather than a diplomatic one. And there are a lot of military vets on this blog, as well as combat ones, who laugh at your suggestion this was a job for a Spectre gunship, at night involving an over run position amongst a civilian populace. You will get your answers, but not before the election, except the ones your side makes up, pretending to care about ‘the state department’ that republicans hate almost as much as the CIA.

  81. 81.

    Morbo

    October 26, 2012 at 7:59 pm

    No respect for the A10, no respect I tells ya!

  82. 82.

    Lol

    October 26, 2012 at 8:04 pm

    @WWStBreitbartD:

    You know that many Libyans died defending diplomatic staff during the attacks right?

  83. 83.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    October 26, 2012 at 8:15 pm

    @rick moran:

    An accurate timeline would do nicely. It can’t be that hard, can it?

    It certainly can’t seem that hard to someone sitting safely in front of their Kommando Keyboard. I’m sure that those inside the embassy were making logbook entries while people were trying to kill them.

  84. 84.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    October 26, 2012 at 8:26 pm

    Owens is probably liberally applying burn cream to his schlong to ease the blisters on it from furiously fapping away at it while writing his love song for killing brown people. Someone needs to take him up in one of those planes so he can whack off a big one.

    Then push him out of it at 10,000 feet.

  85. 85.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    October 26, 2012 at 8:27 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    It certainly can’t seem that hard to someone sitting safely in front of their Kommando Keyboard. I’m sure that those inside the embassy were making logbook entries while people were trying to kill them.

    We’re trying to score a political win over the bodies of our dead Americans here, asshole. Can you try to take this seriously?

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 8:32 pm

    @rick moran:

    The firefight took place at the CIA annex about a mile from the consulate.

    Which makes it an even stupider idea to send in missiles to bomb the site, unless your video game playing has led you to believe that it’s impossible for a poorly aimed missile to take out the entire annex and kill the whole staff.

    Again, this is a stupid idea strictly from the POV of preventing the Americans at the annex from being killed. Killing any nearby civilians would just be an extra-special FUBAR at the FUBAR buffet.

  87. 87.

    Warren Terra

    October 26, 2012 at 8:33 pm

    The AC130 can go about 350 miles an hour, Google tells me. The nearest NATO and American bases that might have one are in Italy, Turkey, and Israel, and are each about 1000 miles away. The attack on the consulate lasted, what, about four hours? They would have had less than an hour to collect the crew, brief them, prep the plane, and launch – and that’s if they wanted to show up just barely too late, and that ignores all the obvious points about the inevitability of such an airstrike massacring our defenders, friendlies, bystanders, and press along with our enemies.

    Not to mention that even had the mission inexplicably gone perfectly, indiscriminate slaughter even of your enemies in a wildly uneven battle tends to sour the perception their families, friends, neighbors, and even your allies have of you.

    F’gawd’s sake. If you want a military action against the perpetrators that occurred too late to save our guys, we already had one. It happened a day or two later, when outraged citizens of Benghazi drove out the militias believed to be responsible. Much, much better for us than if we’d killed a few hundred or thousand people some portion of whom happened to be our antagonists.

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    October 26, 2012 at 8:35 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    Well, come on, it’s not like the CIA has any ongoing operations or assets it might need to protect, like Libyan activists who have asked for American assistance, so why not expose all of the CIA operations in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and the surrounding countries?

  89. 89.

    Svensker

    October 26, 2012 at 8:45 pm

    @Lol:

    You know that many Libyans died defending diplomatic staff during the attacks right?

    No, he doesn’t know that. They don’t mention that shit on FOX or Rush, and that’s all these folks hear.

    And he won’t believe you if you tell him it’s true.

  90. 90.

    Honus

    October 26, 2012 at 8:58 pm

    @Nylund: B1 Bob Dornan was the master at that.

  91. 91.

    Ralph Spoilsport

    October 26, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    @SatanicPanic:

    please linky for dogpile on the rabbit

  92. 92.

    burnspbesq

    October 26, 2012 at 9:44 pm

    @Steven:

    At least Tom Clancy tries to understand the capabilities (and vulnerabilities) of weapons systems before he writes about them.

    Apparently it never occurred to this jackass that you have to control airspace before you bring in a low, slow gun platform.

  93. 93.

    Uncle Cosmo

    October 26, 2012 at 10:02 pm

    @Yutsano: As Warren Terra points out in #87, the nearest US airbases were about 3 hr flight time from Behghazi for an AC130. For completeness’ sake, note that an AC130 can neither land on nor launch from even the largest aircraft carrier. Even if it could there wouldn’t be anyplace to store the damn thing–it’s just too big (133 foot wingspan).

  94. 94.

    Gravenstone

    October 26, 2012 at 10:37 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:30+ years ago, while feeding my youthful fascination with military hardware I read a description of an area on the receiving end of an AC-130 mission. It was compared to freshly plowed earth. That description has stayed with me all these years as a striking example of the indiscriminate power of the gunship platform. If I could understand that as a teen, certainly our armchair warriors can appreciate it as well. The reality is more likely they just don’t fucking care. Their fragile little egos demand the something be done! And they don’t give a fuck about the cost as long as they can assuage their sense of impotence.

  95. 95.

    Yutsano

    October 26, 2012 at 10:42 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: I freely admit I know nothing about the aircraft in question. Navy brats didn’t get to see many planes beyond what was on carriers and the Blue Angels. However I did throw in Aviano just as a kind of hedge on that. And it is the closest American air base to Libya.

  96. 96.

    pr

    October 27, 2012 at 12:04 am

    @dmsilev: Which means, of course, spraying bullets all over the bloody place. Which is fine when you’re, you know, suppressing a target at some enemy encampment out in the middle of nowhere. It’s perhaps slightly less optimal for an urban environment where one can’t easily distinguish targets from the people who just happen to be in the vicinity.

    But to make an omelet one must obliterate several eggs. Hear the cries of those unborn chickens. You know, some people think what happened to Humpty-Dumpty was funny, but they didn’t have to clean up in the aftermath of that horrific scene, poor Humpty’s lifeblood now just a gooey yellowish mess in the gutter. That’s nothing to yoke about. Anyway, back to the omelet; chop up some ham (sorry, piggy-piggy)and add some diced green peppers, onions and then add a generous double-mittenful of your favorite shredded cheese for a few seconds at the end.

  97. 97.

    pr

    October 27, 2012 at 12:13 am

    @Mnemosyne:

    I do love his serene confidence that, in the middle of the night with smoke everywhere, the gunners in the airplane would easily be able to tell the difference between the consulate staff and the attackers.

    Nope, no recipe for disaster here! After all, in all of the movies Gomer has seen, the bullets only hit the bad guys, so no harm, no foul.

    But this is where the”American Exceptionalism” Card comes into play, ‘cuz we only use good bullets and “smart” missiles, and anyway, if some “allegedly” innocent folks get smoked it’s probably because God needed them up there for somethingorother.

    Remember, we’re Americans; we’ve got the biggest dicks and we’re always right.

  98. 98.

    Ryan C

    October 27, 2012 at 1:45 am

    @Redshift: Exactly. He knows what it will do to the brown people. He just doesn’t think they’re people!

  99. 99.

    themann1086

    October 27, 2012 at 1:52 am

    @Uncle Cosmo: Dude, all you gotta do is get an 11 kill streak to get the AC130. It arrives automatically, and there’s no friendly fire with it either!

  100. 100.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    October 27, 2012 at 3:34 am

    @SatanicPanic:

    Wingnuts would disagree that Libya is home to any friendlies

    And they’ll do their best to ensure this is the case.

  101. 101.

    rick moran

    October 27, 2012 at 5:41 am

    @Warren Terra:

    The AC-130’s were on station in Benghazi.

  102. 102.

    Sammybaby

    October 27, 2012 at 9:45 am

    @Comrade Dread: Don’t be silly. Who plays with friendly fire turned on, anyway?

  103. 103.

    hrprogressive

    October 27, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    As Call of Duty has taught me, the AC-130 is one of the most feared weapons that can be deployed against the enemy, racking up kills faster than you can say “AC-130 ABOVE!!!!” (in a terrible, stunted, Russian accent, also too)

    Unlike first-person shooter, war-game giddyup-cowboy video games, however, letting a real AC-130 let loose with 40 or 105mm cannon shells would have left us not only with no terrorists, but no American Embassy to save, most likely. Oh yeah, all those people on the ground? Respawn is turned “OFF” in this version of Modern Warfare.

    If the Glibertarians want to blame someone for Bengahzi, why not blame all the fucking ChickenHawk Republicans who voted against increased embassy security?

    Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  104. 104.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    October 27, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Bob Owens was a warrior once, but then he took an arrow to the knee.

  105. 105.

    Matt

    October 27, 2012 at 4:04 pm

    “on a crowd mixed with friendlies”

    Not sure who the average conservative would consider “friendlies” in this situation – the diplomatic staff likely get written off as Kenyan Mooslem Soshamalists, and the locals have three strikes (furriners, brown, and probably Mooslem).

    What Owens is really complaining about is that he didn’t get any new gun-camera video to add to his spank bank.

  106. 106.

    deadrody

    October 27, 2012 at 11:17 pm

    Right, a crowd filled with friendlies ? Yes, I’m sure with dozens of terrorists firing RPGs and mortars there were lots of innocents wandering the streets.

    You libtards are ridiculous.

Comments are closed.

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  1. The Mahablog » Stuff to Read says:
    October 27, 2012 at 9:03 am

    […] have come up with a new excuse for being outraged over Benghazi. John Cole smacks them […]

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