What are we waiting for sticking to the bumpers of our cars a yellow magnetic ribbon with the words "Support our diplomats"? Really, the actions of the Bush administration are motive for a public protest.

A. Dalmau

3 days before I take the foreign service exam!!

I hesitate to offer my views on American policy as a European, a Finn in particular, after having had some insults hurled at me in some instances by Americans calling me all sorts of names with common pejorative "foreigner" somewhere there in the mix. That is why I am so heartened by enlightened Americans like Mr. Blumenthal who are not afraid to give real meaning to the term "dissent", something that seems to be all too rare, sometimes a sin, in the current American political climate.

It baffles me to no end why the great American masses are not outraged by these sorts of administrative sleights of hand... But I guess it's exactly because of that, they are not grand gestures, trumpeted at tightly coreographed media events (where president Bush still, even with the script in hand, usually manages to make a fool of himself publicly, to the seeming delight of his hard-core followers). It is, though, a matter of life and death when state department officials are sent to extremely hostile environments with no military support. And for the sake of what? For the administration to be able to say that they are building the infrastructure in Iraq, not just containing the chaos. A child with the will to see would see the monumental arrogance of power (to use a term employed by Anthony Summers to describe Richard Nixon) at play here.

The U.S should have had the guts originally to mount a full-scale occupation both in Afghanistan and Iraq to put their money where their mouth was. I for one hope that before president Bush's term is over, the scales will really fall from the Americans' eyes in a big way.

It makes sense that the Bush administration, wanting to reduce the number of troops for political reasons, would replace troops with mercenaries.

Apparently mercenaries 'don't count' for PR purposes, just as the administration plays games to keep the Iraq spending out of the budget to claim phony deficit progress.

But: why are the diplomats necessarily unsafe, if they do hire mercenaries for protection?

I can imagine that that may well be adequate. The mercenaries are reportedly the same group, instead of the military, who protect other administration VIP's as well.

Just wanted to point out that foreign service officers (who sign up to go to difficult and sometimes dangerous places, but don't sign up to fight a war) from the State Department and USAID are indeed pressured to go to Iraq, and not just instead of cushy European posts, instead of anywhere. Also, you have to go back to Vietnam to find a precedent for their presence there. Foreign service officers are routinely evacuated from much less dangerous places. Recent examples include Haiti, Kenya, Indonesia, and Pakistan. They have thrown out the rules about whether it is too dangerous to be there when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) are indeed pessimistic about what looks to be a failed Iraqi misadventure; but nobody is being "forced" to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. When an FSO is "forced" to go somewhere, they are "identified" for a "directed assignment." So goes the jargon. There have been no directed assignments to Iraq, and I seriously doubt there will be.

There is pressure to do a tour in-theater, to be sure. There are financial incentives to serve in Iraq, and a growing feeling that service in Iraq or Afghanistan is a box you need to check to be promoted. Iraqi service supposedly also guarantees a plum onward assignment, although that's open to debate according to some. But none of that amounts to forcing anyone to go anywhere they don't want to. There are hundreds of posts abroad and thousands of jobs in Washington, and there's always an alternative.

I haven't seen the bid list Blumenthal refers to (w/ PRT positions), but I've seen plenty of others, and been in contact with the personnel office that puts together Iraqi assignments (usually 6 to 12 month unaccompanied tours). There are more volunteers than jobs, at least at this point. Not everyone willing to go has been selected. Many younger officers w/ no kids, etc., have been attracted to the short-term assignments for a variety of reasons.

Iraq is obviously a worst-case scenario, but there are always risks involved in the Foreign Service lifestyle. It comes with the territory, and everyone in the Service knows it. You can be raped in Port-au-Prince, cut in Rio, blown up in Peshawar, or just come down with a nice case of TB in Mexico City or Manila. Choose your poison.

As noted elsewhere, some of Blumenthal's details may be off, but the tone is basically correct--diplomats are being pressured and, through the promotion system, virtually coerced to taking on assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan. While not noted herein, another unintended consequence of the quagmire is the diversion of resources which is reducing security levels elsewhere in the world because of need to feed the beast in Iraq. Many diplomats are reluctant to go to Iraq, not just because of the physical risk, but because they recognized the administration's lies justifying the war. They sense that they would be risking their lives, not for the benefit of their nation, but to help promote the myopic neocon world-vision that underpins the whole operation. It's a helluva thing to die for.

Since I am a Vietnam veteran and have a working knowledge of a great foreign policy debacle, I too have said to myself, like the high-level State department official cited in Sid's article, that the United States would never again repeat the same mistakes in another theater of operation. That is what mystifies me about the magnitude of the debacle in Iraq. Perhaps Gore Vidal is correct that we live in the United States of Amnesia. I wonder if Condi has ever read a historical account of the Vietnam War. Or perhaps David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest? But Iraq will probably be even worse than Vietnam, given the tribal anomosity between the Sunnis and Shiites in the countries neighboring Iraq and all the black gold underneath the country. It's like watching a slow-motion tape in the prelude to World War III. Hubris on a monumental scale aptly describes the Johnson and Nixon administrations during that era and now the Bush administration. I can see why James Joyce wrote that history is a nightmare from which he was trying to wake up from.