700 Ex-Special Ops Military Professionals Demand the Creation of a House Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi

by Kerry Picket

Seven hundred retired Military Special Operations professionals from the organization "Special Operations Speaks" sent a letter to the House of Representatives urging members to support H.Res 36, which will create a House Select Committee to investigate last September’s deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

“It appears that many of the facts and details surrounding the terrorist attack which resulted in four American deaths and an undetermined number of American casualties have not yet been ascertained by previous hearings and inquiries,” the letter states. It continues further, "Additional information is now slowly surfacing in the media, which makes a comprehensive bipartisan inquiry an imperative. Many questions have not been answered thus far." The letter puts forth over twenty unanswered questions the select committee should address. 

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman on the House Appropriations Committee, issued a resolution for a House Select Committee to investigate issues surrounding the Benghazi Attack last November in the 112th Congress. He re-issued his resolution for the select committee when the 113th Congress began. The resolution currently has over 60 co–sponsors. 

Only Speaker John Boehner (R–OH) can appoint a Select Committee and Boehner appears to mainly rely on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the Benghazi attack. However, any information that may be garnered from that committee will, as always, remain classified. 

"As a retired Special Operations officer who spent most of my thirty-six years preparing for and executing rescue missions to save fellow Americans, I am deeply troubled by the events in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The men and women who I served with lived by an ethos that pledged to never leave a fallen comrade and to make every effort to respond when a fellow American was threatened. I have seen men take great risks to save a fellow warrior. I have even seen men die trying to do so," wrote General William G. 'Jerry' Boykin in a statement to Breitbart News. 

Boykin added, "The lack of accountability regarding the Benghazi event disturbs me greatly and bears the earmarks of a cover up. America is entitled to a full accounting of this egregious attack on our people with some explanation as to why there was no effort to save the Americans in the US Embassy annex and the CIA station, or at least to recover their bodies before they fell into Libyan hands. Our Congress has yet to fulfill its responsibility to provide a complete analysis of the attack or to provide answers as to what exactly happened. A  bi-partisan Special Committee is needed to determine the truth about Benghazi."

Last month, Rep. Wolf, along with Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-PA), a House Ways and Means Committee member, sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry demanding more information on State Department employees who survived the Benghazi attack. In his letter to Kerry, Wolf noted that sources say that as many as 30 survivors of the Benghazi attack were allegedly wounded. Seven of those thirty were said to be critical injuries.  Sec. Kerry confirmed he visited an injured Benghazi survivor at Walter Reed. 

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, pointed to Kerry's admission as a reason why he expects to speak with Benghazi survivors. “Now that Secretary Kerry has publicly, essentially a Senator, in a post way, has chosen to visit with them, any claim that they’re not available at this point to Congress is unsupportable. And I look forward to oversight by all committees," Issa told Breitbart News. 

Since Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) first told Breitbart News in December that the Obama administration had not been allowing him or any other member of Congress to see Benghazi survivors, more Republican members, including Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) are calling for survivors to be allowed to testify at hearings on Capitol Hill without fear of legal or career repercussions. 

Signers of the letter believe the House Select Committee should look into a number of issues, including the lack of military response to the events in Benghazi, if any non-military assistance was provided during the attack; the number U.S. personnel who were injured in Benghazi; the current locations of survivors; the names of the individuals in the White House Situation Room (WHSR) during the entire 8-hour period of the attacks and was a senior US military officer present. 

“As veterans from all aspects of Special Operations, we have no doubt that there’s a lot more to what happened in Benghazi than President Obama and his Administration are letting on. From the very beginning, he has attempted to mislead and outright lied to the American people about why the attack on September 11th, 2012 happened, how it happened, and what our government did or did not do to save the lives of our patriots abroad,” former Navy SEAL Captain Larry Bailey wrote in a statement to Breitbart News.

The representatives from the retired military community want “a full accounting of the events of September 11, 2012,” adding that the,  "American public be fully informed regarding this egregious terrorist attack on US diplomatic personnel and facilities. We owe that truth to the American people and the families of the fallen."


Kerry Picket

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/04/07/Seven-Hundred-Retired-Military-Special-Ops-Tell-Congress-To-Form-Select-Committee-On-Benghazi

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