Oh no. Not another Benghazi timeline

[flipping the last pen in her pen cup in the air]

Would you look at when the Pentagon released this timeline? Not that they wanted the news to go into the Dead News Zone or anything like that, this being only one of the deadest days in the political calendar year:

Pentagon releases Benghazi timeline, defends response
by David Alexander
Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:10am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon leaders knew of the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi an hour after it began, but were unable to mobilize reinforcements based in Europe in time to prevent the death of the U.S. ambassador, according to a timeline released on Friday.
[...]

Stop right there because that's not what SecDef Leon Panetta said little more than two weeks ago. He said they weren't going to deploy forces into harm's way without a clear picture of what was going on and they didn't have a clear picture. Remember that?

[eying a #10 pencil in her pen cup]

Anyhow, for the fools who're still trying to make sense out of what happened in Benghazi and how Washington responded to the attack, here for comparison is the unofficial CIA timeline -- leaked to the New York Times on Nov 1 by unnamed CIA sources (C.I.A. Played Major Role Fighting Militants in Libya Attack.)

See also the CYA explanation about why the unnamed sources waited until Gen. Petraeus was in the Middle East to slip their timeline to the New York Times (Petraeus’s Quieter Style at C.I.A. Leaves Void on Libya Furor - Nov 2).

Not to be confused with the Nov 3 New York Times report, Libya Attack Shows Pentagon’s Limits in Region, in which if I recall the Pentagon explained that both the lone AC-130 gunship and lone armed drone in the American arsenal happened to be situated at the time of the Benghazi attack on the far side of the moon.

As to how many timelines have been released so far, Pundita has lost count. Of course this latest flurry of timelines is all ahead of the congressional inquiries next week on the Benghazi Affair; these in yet another attempt by Congress to figure out what actually happened.

But I'm happy to pass along the news that the State Department is being a veritable fountain of helpfulness to all these congressional inquiries. To show you how helpful, after The Cable's Josh Rogin posted his Nov 8 report, Benghazi documents available to senators only when they are out of town, someone from State hastened to assure him that the documents could be reviewed any time that any relevant professional staff and Congress member wanted to see them. I guess that cuts out the Domino's Pizza delivery guy.

For readers who're just dying to know whether Gen. Petraeus will be testifying at any of the hearings -- according to another update to Rogin's post, why yes he will.

Onward, in the immortal words of David Ronfeldt.

[flipping the pencil in the air]