You don't know what's going on...so you do nothing

Again, I dont' know what to think about this. First off, if we'd gone in and helped our guys...would that have started a war with Libya? Who cares? They're in the Middle East, we're in North America.  We go in, get our guys, Libya declares war - what are they going to do? Recall all their citizens and politicians from our country? Let 'em!

CIA operators were denied three requests to go help those under assault in Benghazi.  "Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the US Consulate and subsequent attack several hours later was denied by US officials -- who also told the CIA operators twice to 'stand down.'"

Not only were they denied permission to go in and help, they were told specifically not to.  They were told to "'stand down' rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11. Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were part of a small team who were at the CIA annex about a mile from the US Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack.
"When they heard the shots fired, they radioed to inform their higher-ups to tell them what they were hearing. They were told to 'stand down,' according to sources familiar with the exchange. An hour later, they called again to headquarters and were again told to 'stand down.' Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the Consulate which at that point was on fire." They went anyway.  They defied the order to stand down.
Here first is Jennifer Griffin from Fox News just moments ago.
GRIFFIN:  Sources who are on the ground in Benghazi during the attack tell Fox News that in fact there were three separate requests to aid not only the attack that was occurring at the consulate and to try and help with that attack, but also requests for outside help, outside military help to help once there were gunfires [sic] and firefights at the CIA annex.  Those requests, we're told, came from higher headquarters.  They were told to stand down.

RUSH:  Again, Woods and Doherty and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate.  They went anyway to try to help.  Leon Panetta -- this is yesterday in Washington at the Pentagon -- the defense secretary in a Q&A, and the reporter said, "There was in fact, Mr. Secretary, a drone over the CIA annex, and there were intelligence officials fighting inside the annex.  I guess the big question is, with those two combined assets, why there wasn't a clear intelligence picture that would have given you what you needed to make some moves?  For instance, flying some F-16s over the area to disperse fighters or dropping more Special Forces in.  Why didn't you do anything?"
PANETTA:  We were prepared to respond to any contingency and certainly had forces in place to do that, but there's a basic principle here.  The basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on, without having some real-time information about what's taking place.  And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground -- or in that area, General Ham, General Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.
RUSH:  This is unbelievable, folks, because this is the secretary of defense last night.  We know the State Department was watching live video of this.  We know the CIA station chief, and we know that the State Department both had sent cables, e-mails, warnings to the White House Situation Room in the first two hours.  We learned yesterday that the White House knew what was going on at the moment it was happening.  We know that of the four Americans dead, two of them died in the last hours of what was a seven-hour assault.