US official: Marine team sent to Yemen

Friday, September 14, 2012

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — An elite Marine rapid response team arrived in Yemen’s capital Friday in the wake of violence and protests at the U.S. Embassy, the Pentagon said.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said the decision to dispatch about 50 Marines to Sanaa was partly in response to the violence and partly as a precautionary measure.

The Marines are members of a platoon from a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team, a specially trained and configured group that makes short-notice deployments in response to terrorist threats and to reinforce security at U.S. embassies.

A similar team was dispatched to Tripoli, Libya, on Wednesday in response to the deadly consulate attack in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stephens and three other Americans.

Little said no other such teams had been sent to Cairo or other Arab capitals where protesters have been demonstrating over an anti-Islam video.

The deployment to Yemen came as that Arab nation’s security forces were firing live rounds and tear gas into the crowd of about 2,000 protesters trying to march to the U.S. embassy. On Thursday hundreds of protesters stormed the embassy compound and burned the American flag.

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AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

More like this story

RobHunterJohnson 8 months, 1 week ago

Someone in another post thought they did not have live ammo! I wonder if they this group of Marines will have live ammo? The right is so obssesed with removing Obama that they will say almost anything. I will wait to see 2016 until after it has been released at Walmart, and I will pick it up at Garage sale for .50 cents? Rob

asb 8 months, 1 week ago

FOX, no doubt.

tonto_goldberg 8 months, 1 week ago

Good choice of words. The source may be viable, maybe as in financially stable. But not reliable in any way.

"The sole source for this assertion was Nightwatch—a conservative "intelligence" blog written by former Defense Department analyst John McCreary and hosted by a subsidiary of a defense contractors' lobby group—which attributed the report to unnamed (and uncounted) "USMC blogs."

These claims were quickly perpetuated by the right-wing Washington Free Beacon and Fox Nation sites, despite never having been confirmed

eileen10 8 months, 1 week ago

Right behind you with .25 cents.

eileen10 8 months, 1 week ago

<p>udaof.com and Washington free beacon

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