"HELL NO WE WON'T GO": FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS TO RICE

Thomas Riggins

Recent press reports have highlighted a growing resistance movement by employees at the US State Department. It seems that the Dept. is having trouble finding enough red blooded pork chop eating real American patriots to serve their country by working out of the super sized new American Embassy in Baghdad. It seems like the diplomatic corps is turning down assignments to Iraq in droves, so the Dept. has issued a ukase to serve in Iraq or be fired.

The State Department insiders know what's what in Iraq, not to be at all fooled by the testimony of Tin Pot generals lying to Congress, and they would rather stay safe and sound then go there.

The New York Times (11/1/07) reported, in an article by Helene Cooper, that "Career Foreign Service officers at the State Department reacted angrily at a town hall meeting on Wednesday to the possibility that they may be forced to go to Iraq, putting senior Bush administration officials on the defensive."

If they are forced to go they demanded to only be sent to the Green Zone (such is their faith in the careerist Gen. Betrayus's "surge" and the security improvement.) As the Times says, Iraq is a place where " the lack of security on the ground outside the Green Zone makes it one of the last places people, particularly those with families [they have to leave them behind in the US], want to go."

Despite all the BS in the right-wing press and the statements of neocon politicians, and Bush groupies, the people at State who know the real deal had their concerns summed up nicely by Jack Croddy, one of the potential victims of the new policy, who expressed everyone's opinion at the meeting with the Bush officials when he told his bosses that it is one thing for someone "who believes in what's going on over there and volunteers" [few and far between it seems] but quite another to force people to serve in Bush's hell hole. "I'm sorry," he said, "but basically that's a potential death sentence and you know it."

It's comforting to know that the people who lie to us all the time about what's going on over there at least know the truth themselves. Nothing concentrates the mind like having your own butt put on the line.
from PAEditorsBlog