Ex-Army colonel questions embassy security

Also on Tuesday, Egyptian extremists began their violent protests of an American-made film clip mocking Islam’s prophet, showing they can penetrate the 15-foot walls of the Cairo embassy, retired Army Col. Bill Olds said.

“This was a good excuse with the 9/11 anniversary, so they got two birds with one stone,” Olds said Thursday in a phone call from Honolulu, where he is visiting family members.

Olds was chief of the Office of Military Cooperation at the Cairo Embassy in the mid-1980s and served from 2004 to 2006 as adviser to the Iraqi military Counter Terrorism Command.

“I’m surprised about the security, the lack of it,” he said about the military-style assault on the consulate in Benghazi that left Stevens and three others dead.

Olds said that because last year’s hostilities that killed longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and overthrew his regime are still simmering, Stevens should have been accompanied by Marines instead of private security contractors. Marines rarely travel outside the embassy, but despite that, there should have been heavier security at the consulate, he said.

He said the Libyan militants who fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles and set the consulate quarters ablaze “probably killed the wrong guy because he was a friend of Libya.”

As for the uprising in Cairo, Olds said, “I’m surprised why the Marines weren’t involved in any deterrent. No one is saying they did anything to repulse these people, especially when they took the (U.S.) flag down.”

The extremists were trying to show that they can attack an American Embassy at any time, Olds said. “They weren’t out to kill anybody.”

Olds’ comments about the attacks were based on information from “valid sources, both Egyptian and American, in Cairo,” who he contacted after Tuesday’s violence.

Olds said the Cairo embassy staff routinely leaves the compound after work to drive 30 minutes to their residences in the community of Maadi; embassy staff in Afghanistan live inside the compound.

Olds worked as a State Department contractor at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan in 2008 on provincial reconstruction and humanitarian aid projects.

“Terrorists don’t wear uniforms,” he noted.

He said a detachment of 75 Marines is assigned to protect the Cairo embassy, but they seemed to offer little resistance to the advancing mob of protesters.

“I can only speculate that somebody made a decision that we don’t want to get into a gunbattle with these militants because they outnumber us,” he said.

A number of Marine Corps blogs reported Thursday that U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson didn’t allow the Marine guards to carry live ammunition, but Pentagon officials denied the reports.

Olds, a Vietnam War Green Beret, said the decision to “bite the bullet on the flag” was disappointing, but it avoided a bloody gunfight.

“I’m very disappointed in (President Barack) Obama when he said Egypt is not an ally or enemy of the United States. They are definitely an ally,” he said.

Olds, 72, had a $500,000 bounty put on his head in 1985 by Gadhafi for leading Egyptian forces in capturing Libyans who hijacked an Egyptian jetliner that landed in Malta.

He said the United States needs to regain the respect it earned in Egypt over the past three decades to quell any potential violence that looms there and in Libya.

“Our response should be that the highest levels of our government should work with the highest levels of the legitimate governments of both these countries and keep a low profile in the press,” he said.