The USS Cole Connection

On October 12th, 2000, at 11:15 a.m., as the Cole was preparing to get under way, a fiberglass fishing boat approached its massive prey. Some of the sailors were standing watch, but many were below decks or waiting in the chow line. Two men brought the tiny skiff to a half amidships, smiled and waved, then stood at attention. The symbolism and the asymmetry of this moment were exactly what bin Laden had dreamed of. "The destroyer represented the capital of the West," he said, "and the small boat represented Mohammed."

USS Cole, October 12th, 2000

Within Hours of the attack, Barry Mawn, head of FBI's New York office, called headquarters and demanded that the New York Office gain control of the investigation . "It's al-Qaeda," he told FBI deputy director Tom Pickard. He wanted O'Neill, the chief of the FBI's counter terrorism section, to be the on scene commander.

As he had during the embassy bombings investigation, Pickard declined, saying that there was no proof that al-Qaeda was involved. He intended to send the Washington Field Office instead. Mawn went over his head, appelaing the decision to FBI director Louis Freeh, who immediately agreed that it was a New York's case. But the question of sending O'Neill was controversial.

-From The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright

These three paragraphs tell a lot, the first describe how a simple attack on a single target can represent so much to a cause hell bent on defeating a culture and nation in the name of their religion. The second can show  the capacity our country has to leap into action and start finding answers, and the third demonstrates the reluctance that is inherent in individuals to consider the worst explanations.

There are many similarities that can be drawn between the assault on the USS Cole and the Benghazi embassy, it appears to be a concise targeted attack against an object that was meant to represent the greater United States, carried out by a common lackey used to call people to there cause. I believe in the months to come as more details are unearthed the intent behind both these attacks may turn out to be very correlated. In the first weeks though, one thing has become brazenly apparent, that this administrations response, when compared to the response from October 12th, 2000, has been found wanting. Consider this following transcript from CNN with about 8 hours of the attack happening;


The president (Clinton) met with his top national security team for a little more than an hour here at the White House security room -- the Situation Room -- receiving updates from agencies around the government and around the world on developments today. When the president came into the Rose Garden to speak to the American people today, he concerned himself first with that suspected terrorist attack on the U.S. Naval vessel on a refueling stop in Yemen -- Mr. Clinton voicing prayers for those killed, injured, and those still missing.

And he promised an aggressive investigation was already under way.

Sound familiar? It shouldn't. Obama did not use the word terror, he pinned responsibility for the attacks on a Youtube video all the way to the UN, he waited weeks before dispatching the FBI, and once his early morning speech in the Rose Garden was completed, he hopped on a plane to Las Vegas.

Nothing like a re election campaign as an excuse to skirt out of a lot of meetings about investigating, and diplomacy, those things are so boring...

Members of the State Department testify to Congress

From ABCNews;

Though the timeline of events outlined on the call was similar to the last official account of the incident, which was given on Sept. 12, some stark differences and new details were revealed.

The biggest difference was a clear statement that there were no protests before the attack. Also it was revealed that former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died from a mortar attack and that officials still do not know how Stevens, who was suffering from severe smoke inhalation, made it from the compound to the hospital.

...Though some administration officials had initially said that the attack grew out of protests over an anti-Muslim film, the senior State Department official told reporters today that "nothing was out of the ordinary" on the night of the attack.

Yes, there are many correlations that you could draw from these two terrorist attacks. No, there are very few that you can draw from the way that our country has responded to them. Tomorrow will be the one month mark since these deadly attacks, and we are still feuding over verbiage and getting stalled as we try and point the finger and anything except the smoldering pile of ash that seems so clearly labeled to so many, and nothing but a bump in the road to some greater goal for others.