This is an important video to watch if you want to understand what happened in Benghazi. I did a lot of work on this subject in the past and the Gowdy commission in Benghazi confirmed much of what I wrote at the time, plus added additional details. To translate the official government talk, the unit in Croatia was 10th Special Forces Group’s CIF team and the unit in the United States that was deployed was a Delta Force Squadron.

To understand why the CIF and the Marine FAST unit were unable to rapidly deploy, you have to understand the air priority codes that these units have. Rapidly deploying SOF units have a B1B air priority meaning that they have their own dedicated aircraft and pilots standing by to respond to emergencies. The CIF and FAST teams do not have that kind of air authority. Delta and Ranger Battalions that are on alert status do, but of course, they are not forward deployed and have to fly from the United States.

At the end, the buck stops with President Obama but you can clearly see that he was not some callous man who sat back and let our people die. He gave the order early on to do everything that could be done to save our people. So what is the answer? Build more airplanes and have an alert status for units like the CIF and FAST teams if that is what you want to do. It is a question of resources, and any military leader anywhere is always going to want more resources.