Gates Backs U.S. Handling of Benghazi, Would Have Done Same

By Sara Forden - May 12, 2013 9:18 AM PT

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates backed the Obama administration’s handling of the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, saying that had he headed the Pentagon at the time he wouldn’t have approved sending a small force into Libya as some critics suggested.

Gates said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program today that sending a single aircraft or a small number of special forces into Libya “without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence, would have been very dangerous.”

Republicans have said the Democratic Obama administration manipulated the characterization of the events that day, saying the White House and State Department played down for political reasons the link to terrorism and warnings from intelligence agencies before the attacks.

Ambassador Thomas Pickering, co-chairman of the State Department accountability review board on Benghazi, said he and retired Admiral Michael Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded after their review that “there was no way any military activity could have been put in place to deal with that particular question.”

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today, Pickering said the review focused on security issues, not on talking points after the fact.

In answer to a question on CNN’s “State of the Nation” about why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasn’t questioned, Pickering said the review concentrated on “where the decisions were made” about security. Those decisions didn’t go up to Clinton’s level, Pickering said.

Cover-Up Allegations
Also speaking on CNN, Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said that, while the allegations of a cover-up about the link to terrorism in Benghazi are “serious” and warrant further investigation, she doesn’t think the situation has gotten to the point of impeachment considerations.

Speaking further on the CBS program, Gates said that he thought U.S. involvement in Libya was a mistake, and he also believes it would be a mistake to get involved in Syria.

“Caution, particularly in terms of arming these groups and in terms of U.S. military involvement, is in order,” Gates said during the interview. “Anybody who says ‘It’s going to be clean, it’s going to be neat, you can establish safe zones, well, most wars aren’t that way.’”

Gates began serving as Defense secretary under Republican President George W. Bush in November 2006 and continued in the post under Democratic President Barack Obama. He left the job in June 2011.

Arming Opposition
Arizona Senator John McCain, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” said he thinks the U.S. should increase support for Syrian opposition forces by arming them and using air power against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“You can go in and give them a safe zone and you give them the weapons they need and the help they need, and stop this unconscionable slaughter,” McCain told ABC.

McCain’s comments follow reports that Assad is making gains in his bid to stay in power in clashes with rebels that have killed an estimated 70,000 people since March 2011, according to United Nations estimates.

McCain said the assistance could be given without committing ground troops to the conflict. “No American boots on the ground,” McCain said.

Assad’s Advantage
Assad’s government “maintains the military advantage -- particularly in firepower and air superiority,” and his inner circle “appears to be largely cohesive,” Defense Intelligence Agency Director Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 18.

No opposition group has been able to unite the diverse factions behind a strategy for replacing the regime, Flynn said at the time.

Two other lawmakers, Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Intelligence committee and a Michigan Republican, and Representative Adam Smith, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, were cautious about U.S. involvement, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.”

Rogers said the U.S. needs to show more leadership, though he said no one is calling for direct U.S. military involvement in Syria. Smith said there are few good military options and a high risk of empowering groups who could be hostile to the U.S.

U.S. Misjudgment
“I believe that we have misjudged the Arab Spring and Arab revolutions,” former Defense Secretary Gates said on CBS. “We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes.”

“Syria, Libya, both artificial creations of colonial powers putting together historically adversarial groups, religions and sects,” Gates said. “And for us to think we can influence or determine the outcome of that, I think is a mistake.”

“There are no institutions in any country in the Middle East, in any Arab country, that provide a basis for enduring freedom or democracy,” Gates said on CBS. “There is no rule of law. There are no civil institutions. And there is no history along these lines.”

Asked if he thought the Iraq war begun by the Bush administration was a mistake, Gates replied: “I think that what we know, in terms of the fact that they did not have weapons of mass destruction, will always taint the fact that we went to war in Iraq.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sara Forden in Washington at sforden@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...-the-same.html