Two Embassy Reinforcement Units Created by the Corps?

via the Marine Times (story posted on 22Mar13).

As violent protests erupted across the Middle East and North Africa this fall, the 4,000 Marines and sailors comprising the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group were on alert, ready to go in. In fact, they remained on that status for 150 days, the majority of their deployment in the 5th and 6th Fleet areas of operations.
The tension may have reached its zenith on Sept. 14, when protestors, angry over an anti-Islam online video, attacked the U.S. Embassy in Sudan. The crisis-response force for top military commanders in the region, including U.S. Central Command, was prepared to go and waited for the order to respond, said Col. Frank Donovan, the 24th MEU commander

No one is noticing a few indisputable facts.

The Marine Corps MEU has the reinforcement mission.  The Marine Corps has never developed other units to perform this role for one simple reason.

No other rapidly deployable MARINE combat formation has the power to provide a CREDIBLE deterrent. 

Suddenly, the Commandant of the Marine Corps has  decided to develop not ONE special embassy reinforcement unit but TWO!

via the  Marine Times (26April2013)....

The Marine Corps will soon be able to dispatch squad-level teams for immediate embassy security reinforcement as the service responds to calls to better protect diplomatic facilities in the wake of September’s deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya.
The Security Augmentation Unit will be based in Quantico, Va., as part of the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group, according to a Marine Corps official at the Pentagon. It will be composed of nine or 10 squad-level teams, totaling between 120 and 130 Marines, he said.

Give this issue to a competent Infantry Fire Team Leader in the Fleet and he'll tell you why this isn't a good idea.  I'm assuming that thinking equal to that resides somewhere at HQMC.

If these formations aren't tactically sound then they must be politically expedient...perhaps an attempt to provide the right visuals to a suspect public that remains concerned about the handling of the Libya Embassy Crisis?

NOTE: Any further discussion of whether or not these "new" units are actually needed versus them being necessary for political expediency can be set aside with a quick glance at Marine Corps concepts.

One of those concepts includes "mini-ARGs" and "Company Landing Teams".  This would have an Amphibious Ready Group splitting up and the LHA sailing to one crisis location, the LPD (especially the new San Antonio class ships) sailing to a different one etc... On board each ship would be reinforced Company Landing Teams and they would be backed up in the case of the LPD with AH-1Zs and on the LHA F-35s/Harriers.  The transports would be allocated as necessary and the situation would be handled.

Once the crisis was over the ARG would reform and continue operations.  If a crisis in a location proved too big for a Company Landing Team to perform then the ARG would reform to carry out THAT mission.

The idea that the Marine Corps is establishing a Crisis Response Force and Reinforcement Squads is an example of current leadership SHITTING away years of planning/operational experience.

These two new units are bullshit.  Plain and simple.