Friday, October 19, 2012

The Last Two Hours

Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were two of the four Americans killed in the attach on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  They were former decorated Navy Seals.  They were not members of the consulate security. They were civilians hired by another government agency and were in Libya looking for missing military missiles. They were in an annex building about a half mile from the consulate's main compound when they responded to gunfire.  Please take a minute and read this account of the last two hours of their lives...

Their heroism is incredible when you consider what they were facing. Doherty and Woods reached the main compound of the Consulate and evacuated approximately 20 employees. Unfortunately, Ambassador Steven’s aide Sean Smith was already dead when they arrived. Woods and Doherty fought through the firefight, and took the consulate employees back to the annex building where again they came under another wave of attacks.

Between the initial firefight at the Main Consulate, and at the annex building, for over two hours they were able to fight back against approximately 200 al-Qaeda terrorists, who pre-planned and coordinated the attack to occur in two stages.

The second wave of attacks at the annex brought even more firepower upon them. Yet they held their position providing time for the 20 consulate employees to be rescued. In total for over two hours they held off upwards of 200 attackers, under heavy fire from RPGs, mortars, and at least one 23mm Anti Aircraft gun firing on their position(s) around the consulate grounds and the annex building.
Here's what President Obama had to say about those last two hours in response to a question asked by Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"...

"If four Americans get killed it is not optimal," the president responded. "And we are going to fix it, all of it. And what happens during the course of a presidency, you know the government is a big operation at any given time, something screws up and you make sure you find out what's broken and you fix it."

Mr. President, two American heroes are dead.  Seems to me it's kind of  late for fixing.

No comments: