In the days running up to the 9/11/2012 terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate, we now know the following:

• no attack aircraft were placed on high alert on Sept 11
• the closest F-16 fighter planes to any of the trouble spots in North Africa were unarmed and in Aviano, Italy
• the closest air refuellers were positioned 10 hours away in Great Britain
• no AC-130 gunships were within a 10-hour flight to Libya
• the commander’s in-extremis force, which included a unit of 23 special operators who are used at the commander’s discretion, were training in Croatia that day. They did not make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy, for another 19 hours after the attack began

Northern Africa had been an active trouble area with civil wars in progress or just dying down for the prior couple of years.  The US had—and has—facilities, assets, personnel, friends, allies, and potential allies in the area for far longer than that.  Yet we chose to take no heads-up action in preparation for a major anti-US anniversary regarding an area of the world likely to…celebrate…that anniversary?  The in-extremis force’s posture could be laid off to bad luck; such units need to train intensively, and they need to do it in realistic arenas.  Maybe their training could have been rescheduled around such an anniversary, though.  Regardless, there is no excuse for the rest of the non-preparation.

Even more troubling, however, are these:

• Neither [AFRICOM Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region Commander, Col George] Bristol, nor his chief military officer on the ground in Tripoli that night, LtCol Sean Gibson, was ever interviewed by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB)
• DoD did not conduct its own internal after-action review separate from the ARB

Why not?  Isn’t anyone in this administration the least bit interested in finding out, and understanding, what happened and how to anticipate future such occurrences?

Or is it that they won’t ask the questions because they don’t want to hear, or are afraid of, the answers?

China’s first lunar rover has successfully separated from the probe that carried it into space has and made its first track upon the surface of the moon, Chinese state media reported Sunday.

Here’s the rub:

The soft landing—the term for a landing in which neither the spacecraft nor its equipment is damaged—was the first on the moon by any nation in 37 years

And not only was it not done by us, it was done by a nation with clear enmity toward us and toward our friends and allies.  Moreover, the People’s Republic of China is making no bones about its future plans for the moon.  They’re planning a sample return mission in their present Chang’e series as soon as 2017 and an astronaut landing after 2020.

The US’ space program?  Well, we don’t have much of one, and none at all where the moon is concerned.  We send the occasional robot off to Mars (those are spectacular missions, doing important science, to be sure), but that’s about it.  American astronauts have to thumb rides to the space station on Russian rockets.  American private companies are (finally!) figuring out how to send supply missions all the way to the space station.  That’s about it.

As for the moon, we got nothing.

Never mind that the back side of the moon is an excellent platform for exploring space.  Never mind that the regolith on the moon—all that moon “soil”—is rich in rocket fuel (it’s loaded with oxygen and aluminum, each a key ingredient).  Or that producing that rocket fuel on the moon and loading it into rockets there considerably cheapens exploration of the rest of the solar system, since all that mass doesn’t have to be carried uphill out of Earth’s gravity.

Never mind that the moon is militarily useful high ground: rocks dropped from there impact Earth’s surface with force of nuclear bombs, and by destroying our launch facilities, any rock throwers will be able to deny us access to space entirely.  Other weapons launched from the moon will be able to destroy our satellites with impunity, which with no launch facilities, we’ll be unable to replace.

But we’re ceding all of that to the PRC.

…in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier in the week.  David Cohen is the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department, and he admits that he is the principal in “crafting and enforcing our sanctions program” against Iran.

With this…interest…in mind, Cohen defended his sanctions program as they exist under this nuclear weapons deal [emphasis added].

[T]he relief package…lion’s share…comes from granting Iran access, in installments, to $4.2 billion of its own revenues currently trapped outside Iran.  In addition, US sanctions on Iran’s petrochemical exports and its auto industry will be temporarily suspended.

We estimate that this additional trade could generate about $1.5 billion in revenue over the next six months….
…
[T]he deal also allows Iran to transfer $400 million of restricted Iranian funds to defray tuition costs for Iranian students studying abroad.

If the Iranians comply with their obligations under the Joint Plan, over the next six months they will stand to receive $6 billion to $7 billion in relief, mostly by gaining access to their own money.  Not $1 comes from US taxpayers.

What a monumental failure of understanding.  The problem with this deal, in Cohen’s context, is not that none of the monies going to Iran are coming from us, it’s that these are monies going to Iran.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion to which Iran did not have access until we lifted eased the sanctions.  Full stop.

These are $6 billion to $7 billion which the Iranian government will not use to better the lot of the Iranian people.  No, this is money with which Iran will

reverse that neutralization [of its stockpile of near-Highly Enriched Uranium]; money with which to reconnect those centrifuge cascades and to generate additional ones; money with which actually to develop the engineering capacity to assemble a deliverable warhead (which, recall, requires no missiles—although Iran now will get a taste of money with which to continue that development—but only a train car or a collection of suitcases separately carried into the target zone); money with which to fund its terror operations, its support of its Syrian and Iraqi operations; etc; etc; etc.

Full stop.

On the People’s Republic Of China’s new Air Defense Identification Zone (which the PRC demands that all aircraft intending to fly through it check in with the Chinese government first), an airspace grab that goes with its grab of the East China Sea below, the Obama administration has had this response.

National security spokesman Patrick Ventrell:

pointed to White House press secretary Jay Carney’s remark that “the US government does not accept or recognize China’s newly declared” defense zone.

State Department spokesman Marie Harf:

[W]e’ve been very clear that we’ve called on China not to implement the ADIZ, and we’ll continue to do so.

JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey:

So it wasn’t the declaration of the ADIZ that actually was destabilizing.  It was their assertion that they would cause all aircraft entering the ADIZ to report regardless of whether they were intending to enter into the sovereign airspace of China. And that is destabilizing.

Vice President Joe Biden:

the US is “deeply concerned.”

And

crisis management mechanisms and effective channels of communication between China and Japan to reduce the risk of escalation.

President Barack Obama:

Not even that much.

PRC President Xi Jinping:

…took on board what the Vice President laid out….

Yeah.  We showed ’em.