In view of the eruption of violent anti-US protests in West Asia, the Obama administration has ordered a review of the security postures of all its overseas diplomatic missions, a US official said today.
“The night of the incident we sent a message to every diplomatic mission in the world, asking them to again review security and take the necessary measures,” State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, told presspersons at her daily news conference.
“There were increased emergency warnings or security warnings that were also issued to Americans in some 50-plus missions around the world since that went out. That’s part and parcel of the reviews that embassies and consulates and other missions around the world do,” she said.
Nuland said security protocols are constantly being reviewed, and it will continue to be done.
She said the Benghazi Consulate had no Marines like several other such missions in different places.
“We have a number of posts around the world. There are embassies without Marines. There are other consulates of this type without Marines.
“We make a decision based on the local conditions as to whether that makes sense,” she said.
“But this posture that we had, which was external security by the Libyans, and then a strong US security presence, but it didn’t include that particular contingent of Americans in a number of other missions that look a lot like Benghazi,” Nuland said.