The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool.
William McFee
The Benghazi Attack Scandal Independent Review Findings
HT CNN:
1...The Board concluded that there was no protest prior to the attacks...
2. Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department (the “Department”) resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.
Overall, the number of Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) security staff in Benghazi on the day of the attack and in the months and weeks leading up to it was inadequate, despite repeated requests from Special Mission Benghazi and Embassy Tripoli for additional staffing. Board members found a pervasive realization among personnel who served in Benghazi that the Special Mission was not a high priority for Washington
In the weeks and months leading up to the attacks, the response from post, Embassy Tripoli, and Washington to a deteriorating security situation was inadequate.To be fair, the report also notes intelligence failure/gaps, poor Libyan security and the late ambassador had been given wide discretion and occasionally operated on the periphery of standard operating procedure.
The bottom line is a failure of leadership and management in the State Department and the White House. Effective management anticipates likely problems and works to address them, not gloss over them or trap them in bureaucratic inertia. 9/11 has significance, something the Obama Administration seemed to understand last year in preparing for the tenth year anniversary. Certainly if the administration had failed to act on actionable intelligence, it would have been particularly damning, But the ambassador visiting a consulate with known security issues on the fly on the anniversary was a bad idea from the get-go; as Dana Carvey might say, "Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture."
As to a President whom has been elected on the promises of competent government, was this really just an isolated incident-- or the tip of the iceberg?
Knowing the Motive Doesn't Make Us Feel Better
One of the problems with limited information coming from a tragedy is that conspiracy theories can spring up overnight. For example, the Daily Bell recently posed over 30 related questions.in a post.
One of the puzzling details to me from the start is the fact Lanza killed his mother, perhaps the only person in his life whom loved him unconditionally. His older brother hadn't been home in nearly 2 years. Fox News has a good exclusive report which fills in some context.
We already knew he had Asperger's syndrome, a type of autism, his mother was finding herself unable to cope with her grown son's issues and had taken initial steps towards having him committed to an institution. His mother had volunteered at his former elementary school, working with kindergartners, including perhaps most of the first grader victims last year, and was good friends with school administrators whom were killed in the attack. Perhaps he felt his mother's volunteer activity was a contributing factor towards his prospective involuntary commitment, and he thought the adults morally supported his mother's decision and in some way he held them responsible. He probably feared he would be committed in conviction of his crimes and hence saw suicide as his only way out.
The full context isn't known. Was he resisting taking meds? I have had to work occasionally with unstable/mentally ill people on projects: I was even attacked by one on a Chicago project. (I was the production DBA contractor with multiple upgrade projects under my belt; there was a cost accounting issue while I worked both roles.) I had replaced him as lead project DBA for several blunders unproductively frittering away weeks on a tight project schedule; the final straw was when the rogue DBA himself caused the project database to fail in an unrecoverable manner (he knowingly deleted a file underlying a critical tablespace), and his database backups were unusable, losing whatever progress had been made over the prior month. He was supposed to have been rolled off/terminated after he went home to Florida that weekend, but the client unfortunately demanded us to work fully staffed over the weekend; I got the project back on a productive track over the weekend. The DBA had someone in project management protecting his spot, arguing (over my objections) we didn't have time to bring another project DBA up to speed; this guy was, of course, obsessed with regaining his lead spot. My experience was like having to sprint with two 200-lb. men on my back.
Just a couple of points to show how odd this rogue DBA was: he would occasionally walk around barefoot, and after that weekend in a brief status meeting on Monday morning, he complained to the female project consultants that he hadn't been able to get his shirts laundered--because, you know, you can't get your shirts laundered in Chicago over the weekend--he raised up his long-sleeved dress shirt arms, pointed at the armpit sweat stains and said, "Stinky! Stinky! Stinky!" He kept repeating himself until a consultant told him to knock it off. About 3 weeks later while talking to my boss on a cell phone call I was shoved off-balance in a secure server room.
I think I mentioned this anecdote before. While working as the corporate DBA for a Japanese high tech subsidiary, my newly hired IT boss had decided to ax a failing Clarify project headed by a former company manager whom had refused to follow the company headquarters migration from the Chicago suburbs to Santa Clara years earlier. The consulting company sued to keep the contract, and company lawyers got involved. I had a systems analyst colleague whom was deeply involved in the project in the last cubicle on my row. One day the lawyer walked by my cubicle without a word. I called out, "XXX isn't here today" No response. That wasn't odd by itself, but he repeated walking through my cubicle row maybe 8 times over the next 15 minutes, it was as if he was in an endless loop.
But even odder was an incident in an employee break room several feet from my cubicle. I heard the refrigerator door slam shut hard and then maybe another dozen times in a row. I basically called out to whomever was doing it to knock it off. He repeated it another series or two I finally got up to confront the guy and saw no one in the room. Then I felt I was being watched and turned to find him staring at me, his back pinned to the wall; he left the room after our eyes met.
A colleague and I reported the incidents to our boss. The paralegal running the department came to interview us. Later that day we got called into a meeting where the manager told us the man had been fired. Apparently he admitted to being off his meds; the company was willing to keep him on if he agreed to stay on his meds, but he refused. He was then terminated and escorted out of the building but reportedly tried to force himself back in. I was sure the guy knew who had complained and spent the next 2 weeks checking the parking lot and whether I was being followed.
I never wanted the guy fired. Did something like that occur with Lanza (i.e., going off meds)? I don't know. Autistic people often have difficulties integrating the feelings of other people. Not an excuse, but perhaps an explanation of the context.
Political Humor
Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective
Kay Starr, "I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm"
