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They sure did a terrible job of protecting Michael!


They should have said, "We will send Sonny to meet with you."
Then when Mike shows up he comes up with an excuse why S couldn't make it and that he has been entrusted to work out the drug deal etc.
They frisk him, see he's clean and have their meeting where he kills them.

Then they should have put him anywhere else but such an obvious place such as Italy.
Send him to Finland, Egypt, Back in the USSR, No Name Idaho.
Anywhere but Italy and with entrusted bodyguards from NY.

They sure did botch their protection for him.
Good thing his bride wanted to learn to drive!

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not sure the first part would have worked because it was Solozzo who insisted on meeting with Michael and only Michael, on the basis that Michael was a "civilian" and therefore not considered a threat, and Solozzo then did his best to keep the location of the meeting a secret so that no Corleone members could turn up blazing. It's therefore highly unlikely that they'd have agreed to have Sonny (or anyone other than Michael, apart from maybe Tom Hagen again) meet with them. Sorry.
However, I did start another thread saying that once the Corleones found out where the meeting was going to be, they could have found alternative means of carrying out the assassination(s). That would have at least provided some protection for him. OK, the rival families would know, or at least strongly suspect, that Michael was in on the setup, but he'd have been one step removed from the incident so at least he wouldn't also be wanted by the law for personally gunning down a police captain. Think that's one of the biggest reasons they had to get him out of the USA, otherwise he could have just gone to Vegas with Fredo.

Your second point, though, yeah, the old country would be one of the first places the enemy would look, and chances are the other families would also have a lot of connections there and so it would be a lot easier for them to make a move against Michael. Plus the Corleones should have known how disloyal and easily corruptible low-level members such as bodygurards could be, especially given what had just happened with Paulie.
Presumably they were confident that Vito's old friend Don Tomassino would be able to organise protection for Michael out there OK, but evidently he didn't.

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