“With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night that decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

These are the famous words spoken in obvious vexation during Hillary Clinton’s congressional hearing on Benghazi.

The truth of the matter is the attack on our diplomatic mission in Libya was preventable and it was far more than a mere demonstration or protest, and the realities, as they continue to unfold, are proving these facts to be correct.

The January 2014 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Report on Benghazi revealed that, without a doubt, this attack was preventable. This was confirmed by the committee’s chair, Democrat Diane Feinstein, when she said that the intelligence was adequate and that the attack should have been preventable.

The report also indicated that Ambassador Stevens rejected added security offered by General Ham. However, Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, reported in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Ambassador Stevens did, indeed, want more security. In fact he had put in a request for an additional 13 American security personnel.

However, at the same time he requested a postponement of a decision to transfer authority over the Special Forces in Benghazi from the ambassador and the State Department to the Defense Department under Gen. Ham. State Department Undersecretary Kennedy refused to make this possible.    

Ambassador Steven’s concern was that transferring this authority would strip the Special Forces serving in Libya of their diplomatic immunity. Under these circumstances, if a member of the Special Forces used weapons to protect themselves, other personnel, or the facility, they would be subject to Libyan law. Under these circumstances, Stevens felt compelled to forfeit his request.

What are the facts that should have been evident, from the beginning, to conclude that this attack was more than a mere protest?  Let’s begin by saying that the type of weaponry (mortars) used in this deadly attack is certainly not the type that can be hastily set up and still achieve the unbelievable pinpoint accuracy that was accomplished in this nighttime raid.  

Because I had experience serving in a mortar battery, I can tell you that the complexity of a mission like this requires vital information necessary for proper setting of the guns. First, they needed the coordinates (exact location) of the guns. Second, they needed the same information regarding the target, which was the center of the diplomatic mission in this case.Third, it required that they had the exact distance from the guns to the mission.

Keep in mind that this attack was achieved in the dark of the night, which leads one to believe that most of this information gathering surely was made ahead of time and before darkness.

According to reports of where the rounds hit that night, the first shot went long. The second shot was short. The next three hit their target, killing the two former SEALs and wounding others. This type of adjusting of rounds fired is standard operating procedure and is called “bracketing” in artillery terms. This operation most certainly required a skillful forward observer within sight of the target to relay those fine adjustments to the guns.

A shoot-from-the-hip methodology would not achieve this kind of accuracy. To hit this small target, within an urban environment, with just two adjustment rounds fired by these mortars was a phenomenal feat and had to have been carried out by a highly skilled team. And, no, this was certainly not done by people out for a walk that night deciding to go kill some Americans.

There are two important discernable conclusions in examining this story. First, the death of these four government officials was certainly preventable. Second, understanding the complexity of the attack refutes the idea that it was merely a demonstration or a simple protest about an amateur movie, which Hillary Clinton and the president sold to the American people and to the rest of the world.

Madam Secretary, I guess that 3 a.m. call you promised you would be ready to act upon, received only a busy signal from both you and President Obama on Sept. 11, 2012.

Still is a resident of Kalispell.