Is Embassy Security Underfunded?

The next time somebody tells you that Republicans cut funding for embassy security, send them this link to reporting by the Daily Beast's own Eli Lake:

According to testimony last month from Michael J. Courts, a Government Accountability Office auditor, funding for diplomatic security was $200 million annually in 1998, the year al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. By 2008, that figure had risen to $1.8 billion. The size of the workforce doubled in the meantime, to more than 2,000, between 1998 and 2009. Courts said this massive expansion has occurred without the State Department conducting a strategic review of its diplomatic security needs.