http://cnsnews.com/blog/michelle-malkin/camp-bastion-cover
Do you remember what happened last year on 9/14? Where are the White House phone calls for the families who continue to grieve? What is being done to prevent another fatal attack like the one on 9/14? And why is the full truth being withheld from the American public?
Benghazi isn't the only bloody disaster being covered up by the Obama administration. As I reported in a series of columns and blog posts last fall, three days after the deadly siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Two heroic U.S. Marines — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — were killed in the battle. Many surviving Marines have been honored for their brave, quick-thinking actions to save their comrades and civilians caught in the crossfire.
Family members are angry that military brass are still trying to suppress details of the fateful budget and strategic decisions that led to the attack. But they won't stay silent. "This is political," one Camp Bastion relative told me this week. "Just like Benghazi, they don't want people to know."
In case you were sleeping or had forgotten: The meticulously coordinated siege at Camp Bastion by 15 Taliban infiltrators — dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons — resulted not only in two deaths and nearly a dozen injuries, but also in the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam. Camp Bastion is Britain's main military base in Afghanistan; it's adjacent to our Marines' Camp Leatherneck.
Eight irreplaceable U.S. aircraft were destroyed or put out of action during the raid. A trio of refueling stations was decimated; a half-dozen hangars were damaged. The attack came exactly six months after a failed jihadi suicide attack targeting former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Camp Bastion family members are hearing that U.S. and British military leaders left their loved ones vulnerable to attack by outsourcing watchtower security on the base to soldiers from Tonga, who were known to fall asleep on the job. Deborah Hatheway, aunt of Sgt. Atwell and the family's spokesperson, is naming names and mincing no words. She says Major General Charles "Mark" Gurganus, who recently returned to the U.S. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, was ultimately responsible for skimping on security patrols. "He might as well have made it easier for the Taliban by cutting the perimeter fence himself and putting out the welcome mat," Hatheway told me.
This is the same Gurganus who ordered Marines to disarm — immediately after the failed jihadi attack on Panetta last year — because he wanted them "to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners."
Hatheway says her family has learned that "it took over an hour before any of the other coalition forces arrived to help the Marines, who were already engaged with the terrorists and had it under control." In addition, she says, they've learned that those on the ground did not have "proper protective gear available ... or properly functioning weapons."
Bastion families have raised questions with politicians and Pentagon officials in Washington, but are being forced to jump through Freedom of Information Act hoops to get to the bottom of the story. If ever.
In the meantime, a few officers in the know have begun leaking to the press. A little-noticed article by Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran two weeks ago reported that "several officials with direct knowledge of the assault said in recent interviews that staffing decisions by U.S. and British commanders weakened the base's defenses, making it easier for the insurgents to reconnoiter the compound and enter without resistance."
Cue the stonewalling. According to the Post, "When the House Armed Services Committee asked to see the initial Marine security review earlier this year, senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff deemed it insufficient for release and ordered the Marines to conduct a fuller review, military officials said. But that examination still fell short of an official investigation." Neither the Marine Corps nor NATO plans to release the results of their separate investigations — in part, the Post reports, "to avoid embarrassing the British for leaving towers unmanned."
There's a whole lotta CYA going on. Sgt. Atwell's family wants America to know: "This must end."
Replies
What's new, Americans will continue to be slaughtered for no good reason other than they are being put in harms way for no good reason!! If we are going to commit troops to combat, the combat should be absolutely unrestricted!!! We destroy the enemy, his roads, bridges, rail roads, power plants, food, fuel munitions and water supplies!! In short we make life for our enemies and their families and fellow citizens pure HELL!!!!
We should be raining hell down upon the muzzies. They are NOT our friends.
We have not gone to "combat" since before I entered the Corps in 76. We have fought five or six dozen "actions" under U.N. rules since then, and every one of them has been an unmitigated disaster.
There are good reasons for the consistent results. There is no intention of allowing us to win. We are to be used to use us up, but we are the enemy, and without an enemy of our own, capable of taking us down, the plan is to allow us to wear ourselves down, while converting our culture to suicidal in nature, so we shall be easy to take out without much trouble, the moment the economic collapse begins.
We should easily end all support of the armed forces, they are entirely in the hands of our true enemy, our commanders and higher, and the U.N. We have accomplished only the coherency of islam, ensuring visceral hatred of us, specifically, and while accomplishing this, we have ensured all the remaining Christian populations of the middle east are being killed off.
Our sole "national security" rests in the hands of "the militia" alone if we would keep our Nation. We must take serious consideration of the FACT our government is the "domestic enemy" and in league demonstrably, with the "radical muslims", those who actually think we are "the great Satan", and aren't afraid to testify their desires.
There used to be "stonewalling" for career enhancement, or saving one's ass, but those selected for flag rank now are all fully on board with the "new world order", and all "stonewalling" is to keep the lie working.
We are set up, ready to be taken down, and "we, the people" are the sole thing standing in the way. That means we'd better get real serious at getting as much control as we possibly can, the time is getting short.
Semper Fidelis, John McClain, GySgt, USMC, ret.