I do have to LOL a little at the "well the military just isn't suited for, you know, just doing stuff at the drop of a hat" talking point in regards to Benghazi.
I mean really, a Trillion plus dollar a year military/intelligence/industrial complex and we don't have anybody on alert for these kinds of things in a place like the Middle East and North Africa?
Where were you in 2003 when we invaded Iraq? Do you remember when 4th ID was delayed for months because Turkey refused to let us ship our equipment through their airspace, so we had to put that stuff on container ships and go the long way around? Logistics isn't easy at that scale.
And you don't just send in a small force without properly assessing the threat level. The US military learned that lesson all too well in 1993 in Mogadishu.
What happens when the Chinese fire one of the "carrier killer" anti-shipping missiles at us? Do we have to convene meetings at every level of the Navy, conduct 2 years of research and write 15,000 pages of White Papers before we can react?
No, because the Navy has been planning and training for that sort of scenario for years now. Not to mention we have plenty of assets in place for just that sort of event.
The foreign media was all over the AQ presence in Benghazi for months prior to the Embassy attack . . . but then again, we probably didn't want that out there all that much considering we used our "usual suspect" AL-CIAda types to overthrow Gaddafi to begin with.
Go look at the timeline of events of when President Bush sent in troops to Liberia in 2003 to secure the US Embassy there. That should give you an idea of our reaction capabilities in North Africa. Former Defense Secretary Gates is right on this, as he should know.
