The irony is simply disgusting. The Libyan consulate that was attacked, resulting in four American deaths, including that of the ambassador had no Marine protection. Yet, Valerie Jarrett, a Senior Advisor to the President of the United States, Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, gets a full secret service detail.
Ms. Garrett has no position in national security matters and yet she has Secret Service protection. According to Fox News she dodged questions regarding the reason for the Secret Service detail. Fox reports,
Sr. White House adviser Valerie Jarrett refused to answer questions on Tuesday at a Washington D.C. event, addressing bullying prevention, about why she has a secret service detail and the recent story from the Daily Caller regarding internal emails showing that the U.S. Treasury Department was behind cutting off the pensions of non-union workers at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.
How is it that a non-elected official who doesn’t deal in national security matters gets full protection from our government at a cost of millions each year to taxpayers and yet a U.S. ambassador in a foreign country gets none?
Meanwhile, in Libya there were no American Marines sent to protect the people in our embassy. According to Politico,
Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Kendra Motz said that Marines were not posted to the consulate, unlike the embassy in the capital, Tripoli.
A defense official told POLITICO on Wednesday that the Pentagon is sending an elite team of about 50 additional Marines, called a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team, to reinforce the embassy.
A senior administration official Wednesday called the Benghazi consulate “an interim facility,” which the State Department began using “before the fall of Qadhafi.” It was staffed Tuesday by Libyan and State Department security officers. The consulate came under fire from heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at about 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday. By the time the attack ended several hours later, four Americans were dead and three others had been injured.
The Benghazi consulate had “lock-and-key” security, not the same level of defenses as a formal embassy, an intelligence source told POLITICO. That means it had no bulletproof glass, reinforced doors or other features common to embassies. The intelligence source contrasted it with the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt – “a permanent facility, which is a lot easier to defend.” The Cairo embassy also was attacked Tuesday.
While it is good to see that Marines are on their way their to protect the embassy and those in it, it is a bit late for the Obama administration to be doing what they are doing in regards to the situation. Of course, it hasn’t stopped Barack Obama from campaigning in the least. He hasn’t missed a step in his campaign. It’s as though the man is completely oblivious to the fact that the Muslim world is up in arms against the U.S., but it seems that maybe he is not that shocked over the situation, but fully expects it.
In either case, now Marines are on the ground in Yemen and Libya and it seems that their lives will now be put in danger. Everyone can rest easy though knowing that Ms. Jarrett, who is in no official capacity to deal with national security is guarded safely by our tax dollars.
