A former Navy SEAL commando hailed a new book on the 2012 U.S. embassy compound attack in Benghazi, Libya as an antidote to politically motivated claims by Democrats that the raid and the resulting deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three more Americans were unpreventable.
"It's a perspective that needs to be heard," Scott Taylor told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV Friday in a discussion of "13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi."
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"13 Hours" comes out on Tuesday, close to the second anniversary of the terrorist assault that killed Stevens, a diplomatic aide and two former Navy SEALs who tried to rescue U.S. personnel.
The book,
obtained in advance by the New York Times, is co-written with a journalist by five CIA security contractors who were among those in Benghazi that night and who, according to the book, were ordered by a CIA station chief to "stand down" while the compound burned.
The book claims that the station chief, identified only as "Bob," was trying to round up a Libyan militia to lead a counter-attack and rescue U.S. personnel — while the armed contractors, all ex-commandos, sat in a car less than a mile from the burning compound, listening to ever more panicked radio traffic from inside.
"If you guys do not get here, we are going to die," a diplomatic security agent radioed out, prompting the team to finally defy the station chief and race to the compound, according to the book.
Two of that team, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in the fighting, and the book is expected to raise fresh questions about the deadly lapse in embassy security.
The Obama administration initially called the attack a spontaneous, unforeseeable reaction to a provocative video put out by an anti-Muslim filmmaker.
Critics have charged that alibi was concocted to duck responsibility for lax security at the compound, which persisted despite warnings to State Department officials that the facility was vulunerable to attack and that the situation on the ground in Libya was unstable after the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Libya has since erupted into factional violence that observers fear will become an all-out civil war.
A House Select Committee on Benghazi is investigating the compound attack, and its chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican,
released a statement through the committee's Web site on Friday responding to the Times report.
"The Committee has heard of these concerns and they go to the heart of why Congress established this Committee — to determine all of the facts of what happened in Benghazi before, during and after the terrorist attack that day. We welcome the opportunity, and expect, to talk to personnel who were on the ground in Benghazi, their superiors, and anyone with relevant information related to the Benghazi terrorist attack," the statement read.
"I'm pleased that this is coming out, that they are now able to tell their story, and that the American people will also hear from the folks who were on the ground," said ex-SEAL Taylor, president of OPSEC, a nonprofit group that lobbies on behalf of current and former members of U.S. Special Operations Forces.
"When you hear Democrats afterwards [saying], 'Well, we don't know if they could've gotten in there in time or anything like that,' that's all B.S.," said Taylor.
"Of course we would've been sending people in there," he said. "Anyone would be sending folks in there, and certainly these guys who are on the ground there would want to get into that fight no matter what. They knew what the dangers were. They knew that they may die going in there."
Taylor said that while people with U.S. military training respect and observe the chain of command, "There comes a point where authority is sort of breached, if you will, when it comes to saving American lives, when you have the capability to do so.
"And that's what those guys did," Taylor said of the Benghazi security team.
Taylor also said that the Obama administration's "political" handling of events including the Benghazi attack aftermath has alienated military personnel from their civilian commander-in-chief.
"The military runs on discipline, of course and you have to respect the chain of command and the authority," he said. "However, that being said, I believe personally — and I believe many other folks believe, too, from my community — that this administration has created the biggest trust deficit between the military and the civilian leadership that this country has ever known."
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