I'm hearing from friends at State that people are being quietly told that they will be fast-tracked if they volunteer, which all of a sudden removed resistence from some of the more ambitious Dips.

They placed a big box marked "Place your name on a card and insert it into this box to volunteer for Iraq duty.

Problem? Tons of cards and all with George W Bush and "The" Dick Cheney on them.

That is why this idea is dying.

Well good. I sympathise that it's not a great post, but the timing for this was terrible. At exactly the time when the value of diplomacy is under attack from thinktank chickenhawk amatuers, we need foreign service professionals to really step up to the plate. The alternative is to let the Pentagon run our foreign policy, a situation I'm sure even they don't want.

wow....what do you know......professional diplomats who are...like...actually doing a job they were hired to do........what a concept.
I dont know about many of you but in most of my jobs if the boss said to do something, you pretty much were obligated to do it.

people are being quietly told that they will be fast-tracked if they volunteer ... Posted by Rightocenter

Beats sleeping your way to the top, I suppose. It's possible that it might have the opposite effect when there is a clean sweep at the top of State which is probably less than two years away.

Safer than Philly

They'll have a blast.
It's a posting to die for.
And Baghdad Bob McCain will provide them with a map to the best shopping areas.

$740 million U.S Embassy in Baghdad contract goes to First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting (FKTC).

One simple word no one wanted to hear - "Telecommute".

"wow....what do you know......professional diplomats who are...like...actually doing a job they were hired to do........what a concept."

You think these people were told they might be sent to Iraq when they took the job? I don't.

I worked at a place where they started sending employees to India in order to train the locals to take some of our coworkers' jobs. Plenty of people told them to fuck off.

It's possible that it might have the opposite effect when there is a clean sweep at the top of State which is probably less than two years away.

Posted by BlueInBushland at 2007-11-16 08:11 AM

That is a popular misconception, that changes in the appointed positions at the top of any U.S. Gov't Department have much of an impact on the career bureaucrats in the government...they really don't, especially at State.

Most of the people who work in Foggy Bottom are grads of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, Harvard's JFK School of Government, UCLA's MPPIP, Stanford's MIR, Johns Hopkins SAIS or GWU's Edmonds School of Int'l Affairs, and as career diplomats couldn't care less about what they term the SIC (Suckup In Charge).

What is important to them is "Punching their Card" with important appointments to various embassies so that they can get the prime positions either at State, the NSC or ultimately with Think Tanks at any of the aforementioned Universities.

You think these people were told they might be sent to Iraq when they took the job?

Maybe not Iraq specifically, but generally, yes. All career Dips know that they can be sent to dangerous posts, and most of the Foreign Service has joined up since Gulf I, so they all knew it was a possibility.