Amazing stuff.

Some bombshell information on Benghazi came out today…

Woods was part of a CIA team stationed at a safe house a mile from the “consulate” (it wasn’t actually a consulate, it was more of a headquarters for doing weapons deals), and when the fighting started there he and his group requested permission from the higher-ups in the CIA to go and help out. They were told to stand down. They disobeyed that order and went to the “consulate” and helped rescue several people.

But by the time they got back to the “annex” building where they were initially stationed, it was under attack. So they asked AGAIN for military support, and were AGAIN refused. Woods and Glenn Doherty, who had arrived in Benghazi from Tripoli that night as part of a CIA security team dispatched when the trouble started, ended up on the roof manning a machine-gun emplacement. They were killed when mortar shells struck the roof of the annex building.

Woods died at the machine gun. He was defending his countrymen as he bleed to death.

There was a CIA security officer who had a laser painted onto the mortar team and there was apparently an AC-130 gunship available within two hours – or maybe even on station. The fighting at the annex went on for four hours; there was time for the military to step in and save the lives of Woods and Doherty. All they needed was a decision. And didn’t get one after repeated requests. And there is no way the White House wasn’t responsible for making that call.

Meanwhile, Charles Woods has been through hell. Not only did Hillary Clinton greet him as his son’s body arrived back in the states with the news that “we’re going to arrest that filmmaker,” but Joe Biden asked him in a “loud and boisterous” voice, “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”

How he managed not to rip Biden’s head off for such an inappropriate, classless, mentally defective remark is beyond us.

UPDATE: On a number of sites discussing this, there has been something of a back-and-forth about whether an AC-130 gunship was actually on station or not, and whether we know that. But at Blackfive, the obvious answer emerges…

Everyone is reporting this but they are missing a key point. From the retired Delta operator:

Having spent a good bit of time nursing a GLD (ground Laser Designator) in several garden spots around the world, something from the report jumped out at me.

One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target. That means that Specter WAS ON STATION! Probably an AC130U. A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser. You do not “paint” a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.

Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.

If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.

If that SEAL was actively “painting” a target; something was on station to engage! And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!

Blackfive says this thing is bigger than Watergate. Of course it is. Nobody died in Watergate.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh took a call from somebody who very clearly has experience in these kinds of rapid response/crisis action situations, and the caller says basically the same thing – that this had to be a “negative order” to keep our people from acting, and it had to come from Obama himself…

It would be nice if somebody would answer whether there was an operator painting the mortar crew with the laser. Except that answer isn’t coming, because the White House has gone into total communications lockdown despite it being demanded by members of Congress and even the media that a full accounting be given now.

Instead, Obama is calling Mitt Romney a bullshitter. Feature-length films could come out of this sort of projection.