The escalation in anti-American violence, sparked by a promotional video for a film shot in California ridiculing the Muslim faith, and its spread to more Arab capitals yesterday helped to embolden Republicans, who claim that Mr Obama's broader approach to foreign policy and to the managing of the Arab Spring in particular had fallen apart. 

“Look across that region today, and what do we see?” Republican running mate Paul Ryan asked a conservative conference in Washington, offering a withering Obama foreign affairs scorecard. “The slaughter of brave dissidents in Syria. Mobs storming American embassies and consulates. Iran four years closer to gaining a nuclear weapon. Israel, our best ally in the region, treated with indifference bordering on contempt by the Obama administration.”

Accompanied by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the president went to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to receive the bodies of Ambassador Stevens and the other three victims of the Libyan attack. Meanwhile the Pentagon revealed that an elite unit of Marines was being....REST OF IT