US military is not a 911 service
2013-02-07 20:31
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Washington - The US military is not a 911 service ready
to rush to every emergency around the world, Pentagon Chief Leon Panetta told
lawmakers on Thursday, defending the response to an attack on a mission in
Libya.
He also urged a Senate committee to help remove the
threat of deep automatic budget cuts set to hit the defence department from 1
March, calling them one of the greatest risks to America's national security.
The defence secretary and the chairperson of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, were grilled by senators probing what
happened during the deadly 11 September militant attack on the US mission in
Benghazi.
"I firmly believe that the department of defence and
the US armed forces did all we could do in the response to the attacks in
Benghazi," Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Despite having US bases in the Africa region and in
Italy, Panetta said there was not enough time to scramble resources to Benghazi
as the mission and a nearby annex came under fire.
An unmanned surveillance drone did arrive on the scene an
hour and 11 minutes after the start of the attack, but it would have taken a
fixed-wing aircraft between nine to 12 hours to get there.
"The US military, as I've said, is not and frankly
should not be a 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to
every possible contingency around the world," Panetta said.
"The US military has neither the resources nor the
responsibility to have a firehouse next to every US facility in the
world."
Panetta also stressed there had been "no specific
intelligence" of an attack on the mission in Benghazi, in which the US
ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed.
"Frankly, without an adequate warning, there was not
enough time, given the speed of the attack, for armed military assets to
respond," Panetta said.
However, he assured lawmakers that the defence
department, working with the state department, was putting in place new
measures in the wake of the attack, including plans to base 1 000 more Marines
at US missions around the world.
But he warned of the threat to the Pentagon if lawmakers
fail to reach a deal with President Barack Obama to avert automatic budget cuts
on 1 March, which would slash the defence budget by $46bn.
The threat of what is called sequestration is "one
of the greatest security risks we are now facing as a nation," Panetta
said.
"This budget uncertainty could prompt the most
significant military readiness crisis in more than a decade," he warned.
