Dempsey's Benghazi testimony questioned

CNSNews:

An attorney whose firm represents two Benghazi whistleblowers said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lied to the Senate when he said there was never a “stand down” order during the Benghazi attack on Sept. 11, 2012.

“What was fascinating is that he explained his lie to them,” Joe DiGenova, an attorney representing one of the whistleblowers, told CNSNews.com.

“He actually said they were sent to Tripoli. They were needed in Benghazi,” said DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney, now with the Washington firm of DiGenova & Toensing. “They were told not to go to Benghazi, because their mission was Tripoli. I call that a stand down. He doesn’t. He can live with whatever he wants to think, but people died. In my opinion, what he did was lie.”

During testimony to the Senate Budget Committee last Wednesday, Dempsey said, “They weren’t told to stand down. A ‘stand down’ order means don’t do anything. They were told that the mission they were asked to perform was not in Benghazi, but was at Tripoli airport.”

This is contrary to what Gregory Hicks, former number two State Department diplomat in Libya, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the terrorist attack on the Benghazi compound that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Hicks told Congress that after the first attack, a security team left Tripoli for Benghazi with two military personnel and that four members of a special forces team in Tripoli wanted to go in a second wave but were told to stand down. 

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It appears that Gen. Dempsey is waging a military semantics war with critics of his handling of the Benghazi attacks.  It is another example of this administrations conman approach to explaining its conduct or lack of action as in this case.  It makes them look deceitful and slippery.