Ameircans have been told to head to the port in Lybia

tomorrow morning (later today) for evacuation, per local nooz... definitely we are getting to end stage.

Here linky

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-02-22-us-libya_N.htm

nt

as well as a few people with large companies like exon and BP

The State department personnel usually take those risks, and not necessarily happily.

Some, like the Court of St, James, are fun... some... like this, are not.

Well and state department since Dubya made nice with the terrorist dictator so his oil friends could get to the oil.

...to a destabilized part of the world--the exact spot where a bunch of Americans will be tomorrow?

they used to do things like play dreaming of a white christmas in July... but

When a US citizen moves overseas, he/she can register with the US embassy. The registration page includes email as well as phone numbers, address, etc. In countries where things are sticky or can get sticky, the embassy sets up a ward system. This includes an emergency cascade - messages go out from the embassy to the expats, and the expats are suppposed to cascade the information.

Some expats have provision to have satellite phones so they can serve as communications nodes. Others have radios they can tune in to either their company network or the embassy.

When an evacuation is offered, the expats have two options, they can try to get to the embassy, where they pile up in the parking lot and embassy grounds, or they can go to the gathering point (this can be a hotel, a hospital, or a school). If things are really bad, the navy sends helicopters with marines to the embassy and the gathering points to escort convoys. Sometimes the marines can be counterproductive, so people try to sneak out in small groups, it all depends on the situation.

I've lived in places where we figured out the best solution was to take a high speed boat out from a private club, and the expatriates woud just move to apartments close to the club where the boats were located. In another case we had the boats ready to take us to a runway in a pretty isolated spot near the coast, where planes could come in and pick us up.

So it's all sort of hodge podge, there's no unique solutions. The key for most expats is to get their children out safe, and this is usually done without much of a hassle (I haven't heard of American kids getting shot in a long time).

by the Department of State.

I understand that they are journalists and are professionally bound to get the word out, but I don't see anything wrong with holding back when the information could jeopardize Americans abroad.

I hope that the U.S. has something more on the way.

There are 600 Americans there who do not have dual citizenship and thousands more with dual citizenship.

The U.K. and the Netherlands are sending small naval vessels to assist the evacuation of their nationals if necessary.

I hope that we are doing the same thing, and I hope that no news agency will report it.

A US citizen coming from an outlying area or personal residence may not have one, but anyone at the embassy will get escorted.

Past protocol had Americans going to the embassy and then being moved to safety from there

This is no secret to the regime, and would not even be happening without its approval. This is not a covert operaton.