US defence chiefs have defended the military response to last year’s deadly attack on a US mission in Libya, vowing to position small, quick reaction forces closer to global crises centres to be better prepared for any future assaults.
Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were called to testify in front of Congress on Thursday to explain why the military failed to stop the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The two explained that they moved quickly to deploy commando teams from Spain and Central Europe last September 11, the day of the assault on the US installation in Benghazi, but the first military unit did not arrive until 15 hours after the first two attacks. “Time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response,” Panetta said in likely his last appearance before Congress before stepping down as Pentagon chief.
Republicans have accused President Barack Obama’s administration of an election-year cover-up of a terrorist attack in the nearly five months since the assault, and they kept up the politically charged onslaught on Thursday.
The military also found itself under attack, with at least one senator accusing the Joint Chiefs chairman of lying.
Faced with repeated questions about where units were during the attack and what they were doing, Dempsey said the military is taking steps to deal with the next crisis. “We’ve asked each of the services to examine their capability to build additional reaction-like forces, small, rapidly deployable forces,” Dempsey said. In more than four hours of testimony, Panetta and Dempsey described a military unit faced with not a single attack over several hours, but two separate assaults six hours apart; little real-time intelligence data and units too far away to mobilise quickly. On the night of the attack, Panetta issued orders for military forces from Spain and Central Europe to deploy to Libya and for another team of special operations forces in the US to prepare to deploy to a staging base in Europe.
The first of those units did not arrive in the region until well after the attack.
Defence officials have repeatedly said that even if the military had been able to get units there a bit faster, there was no way they could have gotten there in time to make any difference in the deaths of the four Americans.
US defence chiefs defend Benghazi response
