No Marines At Site Where Libyan Ambassador Was Killed

Whether or not there were Marines present during the attack in Libya is something I’ve been wondering about since yesterday and I think I now have my answer. From Politico:

The consulate where an American ambassador to Libya was killed on Tuesday is an “interim facility” not protected by the contingent of Marines that safeguards embassies, POLITICO has learned.

Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed with three other Americans in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the city of Benghazi, where Libyan rebels ousted strongman Moammar Qadhafi last year.

Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Kendra Motz said that Marines were not posted to the consulate, unlike the embassy in the capital, Tripoli.

A defense official told POLITICO on Wednesday that the Pentagon is sending an elite team of about 50 additional Marines, called a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team, to reinforce the embassy.

The Benghazi consulate had “lock-and-key” security, not the same level of defenses as a formal embassy, an intelligence source told POLITICO. That means it had no bulletproof glass, reinforced doors or other features common to embassies. The intelligence source contrasted it with the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt – “a permanent facility, which is a lot easier to defend.” The Cairo embassy also was attacked Tuesday.

A senior administration official Wednesday called the Benghazi consulate “an interim facility,” which the State Department began using “before the fall of Qadhafi.” It was staffed Tuesday by Libyan and State Department security officers.

I’m not so sure I buy that the Ambassador wasn’t the target anymore. Since we already know the “they were incited by a movie’ meme is nonsense, we need to start looking into how this happened. If it was up to me? The first people I’m looking at are the Libyans we employ there as security officers. Yesterday was a coordinated attack on the consulate a in Libya. That isn’t going to be done without some pretty good intelligence of the area and embassy operations. I’d like to know how they got it.