Diplomats in Foxholes: Volunteers Flocking to Baghdad, Rice Says

By Jeff Stein | October 3, 2008 2:23 PM | | Comments (0)

The U.S. Foreign Service took a beating last year following reports that the State Department was having a hard time persuading the striped pants set to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unfair! Critics were twisting the numbers, the American Foreign Service Association contended, but its cause wasn't helped when some in its ranks whined publicly that serving in Iraq was, you know, dangerous.

But that was then. Volunteers are flocking to the war zones now, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced this week, with slots in Iraq and Afghanistan filled through next summer. 
AFSA trumpeted the numbers, and said the media owed American diplomats an apology.

AFSA hopes that those journalists, media outlets, and commentators who erroneously reported last October that the Department of State had been unable to fully staff the Iraq mission will now show as much zeal in reporting that, in fact, every one of these positions in both Iraq and Afghanistan for summer 2009 has been filled more than eight months in advance.  Those journalists did a great disservice to the Department of State and its employees -- who have never shied away from hardship service in some of the most dangerous places on earth -- and we hope that these journalists will now set the record straight.

There you go.

By the way, ever wonder what it's like to work in an embassy? 

AFSA has just published a book, Inside a U.S. Embassy: How the Foreign Service Works for America. It has a couple pages about Iraq.

Tags: Afghanistan, foreign service, Iraq, State Department, weenies

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