http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/index/ en U.S. Department of State 2008-08-29T19:16:00-05:00
Today we have come out of the darkness into a new morning. It is still a little too dark to see clearly all the features, and it is still full of challenge and fraught with dangers but also full of opportunities. For the last generation and arguably since the end of World War I or the Sykes-Picot accord, this region has been unstable and dangerous. Maybe we can help make the future better than the past.

Our long suffering Iraqi friends deserve it.
]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/what_they_said/ 2008-06-30T15:14:00-05:00 About the Author: John Matel serves as Team Leader of the Al Asad Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

You cannot achieve success if you do not stick around long enough to achieve it. Difficult and unexpected circumstances in Iraq provided many excuses to give up. Leading experts and pundits told it straight-out that the United States was defeated. They were wrong, but they could have been right if we had acted on their advice. In other words, a lack of resolve on our part would have made their prophecies self-fulfilling. In the event, the United States stayed for the turn around.

Risk can be controlled but never eliminated and pure uncertainty lurks beyond all the risks we can calculate. Even the most exquisite plans must run the gauntlet of random chance that can devastate a perfect plan or vindicate a dreadful one, which is why we have to analyze the process and not judge strictly by results.

Early in the conflict, many things turned out worse than we reasonably anticipated. Now things have changed. Our enemies turned out to be poorly organized. Often incompetently led and ideologically myopic, they made stupid mistakes that turned local populations against them. Fighting an insurgent enemy can be like playing whack-a-mole. It is a frustrating game, but it is easier if the moles are not very clever. I don't want to take this too far. Many of our opponents are committed, deadly and dangerous and even in small numbers a ruthless adversary can inflict severe suffering, especially if their goal is to attack civilian populations. But these very tactics erode their support.

The big piece of good luck is the flip side of some very bad luck for the rest of the world - soaring oil prices. Iraq recovered its previous ability to produce oil almost at exactly the time world oil prices spiked. During Saddam's time, Iraq earned oil revenues of around $20 billion a year. Experts anticipated revenues at this time of around $35 billion. Last time I heard, they were looking at $80 billion and the number keeps on growing. Oil money lubricates, and more and more often Iraqi funds can pay for the needed infrastructure upgrades and improvements in Iraq.]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/persistence_luck_iraq/ 2008-06-27T17:08:00-05:00 About the Author: John Matel serves as Team Leader of the Al Asad Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

You cannot win a modern war by military means alone. COIN Manual says that some of the best weapons do not shoot. By the way, the COIN Manual is itself a great example of the flexible strategy it advocates. It is a living document, almost a wiki. As new experience is analyzed and digested, it changes and evolves.

Military units have long had Civil Affairs (CA) teams and Commanders' Emergency Response Funds (CERP). These improved conditions for Iraqis and certainly saved many lives. Building on this success and experience in Afghanistan, in November 2005, Secretary of State Rice established Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq. In January 2007, President Bush announced the establishment of embedded PRTs, who work directly with military units such as Regimental Combat Teams.

These were civil-military teams of experts who engaged provincial and local Iraqi officials as well as ordinary Iraqi citizens. Some of their work was old fashioned diplomacy, meeting people, talking to them and listening to concerns. But unlike diplomats in many other contexts, PRT members have access to concrete resources. This development aspect, helping rebuild or in many cases just build for the first time is not entirely new, but putting it together with the interagency team of experts that made up a PRT is breaking some new ground.

PRTs are led by a senior State Foreign Service Officer with a deputy from USAID or a military colonel often as an executive officer. Among others on the team are experts on budgeting, industry, law and agriculture.

In rebuilding Iraq, damage from the 2003 invasion is often the least of our problems. Iraq has been in a state of war and/or sanctions for nearly thirty years. Many things decayed during that time and other things that could have been done never were. The Saddam Hussein regime did minimal or no maintenance on the plant and equipment. The whole country suffered the kind of socialist mismanagement seen in former communist regimes, but with an additional layer of sanctions and war. It might have been better if some of the facilities had been destroyed by CF bombs and could be rebuilt from scratch.

The physical damage can be repaired more easily than the damage to human capital. The late despotism actively destroyed most aspects of civil society, anything that might insulate the people from the dictates of the state. In former communist Europe, it was possible to find functioning civil organizations, as the fiercest aspects of Stalinism were generations in the past. In Iraq, the destruction was more recent and in some ways more though going. Ironically, sanctions and isolation helped finish the demolition Saddam started. The only viable non-governmental structure left were family/tribes and religion.

Iraq has a significant, if now distant, tradition of reasonably competent officials. PRT experts work to revive this and build on it. Iraqis are responding very quickly, considering the conditions.

COIN talks about the need to take, hold & build. CA, CERT & PRTs have helped build physical infrastructure as well as relations. The Iraqi people increasingly have a commitment to their own future and freedom. They will not easily give it up when terrorists come calling. ]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/prts_holistic_approach/ 2008-06-24T20:42:00-05:00 John A Matel serves as an ePRT Leader in Western Anbar, Iraq embedded with the U.S. Regimental Combat Team 5th Marines.

General Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker have given their assessment of the situation in Iraq. They see the big picture and I will not try to add or detract from anything they have said. I am grappling with my own challenge of measurement. How can I tell if my team and I are doing a good job? I am doing my best to deploy all my skill and experience on how to assess and measure. I am delving back to my MBA days when I studied marketing research, but Western Al Anbar presents a researcher with almost the perfect storm of confusion. I am not sure how to measure progress and I am not sure that information is knowable even in theory.

I think the skills of an Anthropologist would be useful. Anthropologists study relationships between people, institutions, traditions and society. The skills of an anthropologist are more appropriate in Iraq than those of a public pollster. I suspect that the usual polling methods will not produce valid results here. I don’t envy those who have to produce "scientific evidence." Figuring out the situation here is more an art than a science, more anecdotal than analytical.

Graphically Misleading

My study of marketing research methods gave me a good feeling for the strengths and weaknesses of statistical studies. The most misleading sort of study is the pseudo-scientific one, with lots of numbers and graphs w/o valid grounding in reality. Such things are usually based on a kind of snowballing of the power of a few guesses or small samples. A few people make estimates that may be locally valid for decision making. For example, "How much traffic is there on the road?" "Lots." You could make a decision based on that, but it is a soft estimate. Somebody aggregates these guesses and gives them numerical weight. As the aggregations get farther from the original sources, they get less and less related to reality BUT more and more impressive in terms of certainty of numbers and presentation. In my traffic example, if you aggregate traffic information from downtown Manhattan and rural Wyoming, you might conclude that traffic is a moderate concern in both places and you could produce graphs and charts to support your position.

I learned a long time ago that if you want to enhance the power of your own gut estimate, you should put it into writing and if possible draw a chart or a graph. Color is always good. I know this works, but I also know that it is primarily a presentation ploy. Even in the best cases, when it is used to simplify information and make it easier to understand, we trade accurate detail for simplification.

The Spock Trap

I think we often demand more from information than it has to teach us and much of our precision is unjustified. I remember in the old Star Trek when Spock would say something like "impact in 10.5 seconds." How stupid is that? By the time he says 10.5, the number has changed. It is unjustified precision, but it is easy to fall into the Spock trap. It makes you seem intelligent. BTW - my own experience in using deceptive numbers is that you are much better off using precise odd numbers. For instance, 97 is a more credible number than 100 or 90. (Remember that Ivory Soap was 99 and 44/100ths percent pure, not 100 %.)

My feeling about the part of Iraq that I know best, the places I have actually set foot and looked at with my own eyes, is that things are much better now than they were when I arrived six months ago. I use the word "feeling" because that is what I have. I have observed that people seem friendlier. Markets are fuller. There seems to be less fear. Local people were once afraid to talk to us or work with us. Not any more. It just feels better.

Hiding Prosperity

I am convinced that conditions here are better than our measurements will be able to detect. Iraqis have a long history of oppression. Smart people learned to hide their prosperity from predatory authorities. If Saddam’s henchmen found out you had something, you might not be able to keep it. We also have the age-old desire to hide assets from the tax collectors. As a result of all this, people have become accustomed to lying to anybody asking too many questions and trying to make conditions seem as dreadful as possible.

A good example of a statistic we cannot use – but we do - is electricity. Iraqis get some hours of electricity from the grid. This power is essentially free, since the authorities have generally lost the capacity to meter and charge for it. Naturally, everybody wants as much of this free power as they can get and when the power comes on they plug in everything they own. It makes demand appear much higher and shortfalls more acute. If asked, people complain bitterly about the lack of power. BUT if you fly over Anbar or drive thorough a city at night, you see plenty of lights even when there is ostensibly no power available because many communities and even individuals have generators. Our ePRT has helped buy some. People prefer not to use these generators because it means that electricity is no longer free. However, when they say that they do not have electricity, they usually really mean that they do not have FREE electricity.

Demand for electricity in Iraq is growing at around 12% a year, as people buy more things like refrigerators, microwaves and DVD players. Supply can never catch up with demand as long as electricity is de-facto free. I am convinced that if/when the authorities figure out how to meter and charge for it, the "problem" of electricity will be mostly solved, or more correctly it will stop being a problem and become an expense.

Greed v Fear

There are some sorts of statistics that I think we might be able to use IF we could assess them. One is the risk premium that contractors and others demand. Six months ago we had to pay relatively more for services because people thought it was risky to deal with us (i.e. they were afraid the insurgents would target them in retaliation). They charged more to compensate for risk. Now the prices we are paying for our projects are dropping relatively. Of course that could be because we are getting better at knowing local conditions and negotiating better deals, but some is a reduced risk premium. I think that if I could figure out a reliable way to estimate the risk premium, I would have a very good measure of improvement. It is a kind of greed v fear measurement.

Bananas, Flowers and Fresh Milk

One of my own assessment methods is a "banana index". I observe fruits in the market especially bananas. No bananas are grown locally. They all have to be imported from somewhere else. It is very hard to get a banana to market exactly at the right time. They will usually be either green or brown. A banana stays yellow for only a short time and if it is mishandled it gets easily bruised. If you see lots of good quality bananas in the market, you know that the distribution system is working reasonably well and that goods are moving expeditiously through the marketplace.

Other perishable products provide similar insights. Fresh milk is a good example. Milk requires refrigeration. If you find fresh milk in the market, you know that the delivery system is working and that there is sufficient electricity to keep the refrigeration systems working most of the time. Another item that shows progress is flowers, which are also perishable and are a type of luxury good.

None of these methods is scientific and none of them work alone, but when you put them together with experience, they allow you to have some idea how things are going. They are just rules of thumb, but if you call them heuristics they sound almost scientific. ]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/hidden_posperity_in_iraq/ 2008-04-08T19:04:00-05:00 John Matel serves as Team Leader of the Al Asad Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

Public perceptions of Iraq are not wrong; they are just out of date. Media coverage of Iraq has dropped in almost perfect correlation with progress made toward peace and stability. As a result, the picture persists from pre-surge 2006 but it is not 2006 anymore. It is post-surge in Anbar Province where a significantly more secure Iraq exists rebuilding, learning, governing, producing and starting to make huge strides along the road to prosperity.

Members of my ePRT recently made a visit to Al Qaim, near the Syrian border, and this provides a good example of what I am talking about. Back in 2006, Al Qaim was a bloody battleground, with AQI cutting off heads and hands while insurgents moved around the province with near impunity. This is the picture we all saw in 2006 of Marines fighting building to building and making gains street by street is the one unfortunately far too many of us still recall. The picture in 2008 shows an area of growing prosperity, with markets full of people and things to buy, homes and businesses being rebuilt and people looking to and planning for their future.

During the visit, ePRT affiliated trainers were just finishing up a course for city managers and local officials on project development and anti-corruption efforts. About forty officials attended the four-day program and even on the last day of the training they were involved, excited and animated. A four-day course will not solve Iraq's governance problems, but at least these officials had the ability to imagine and work toward a future better than the past.

Not far away is a vocational training center, run by a USAID contractor. It is graduating its second class of students since it was founded just over a year ago and a third class is already oversubscribed. Young Iraqis are learning all sorts of useful basic skills, such as electrical work, heating and air conditioning, appliance repair, auto mechanics and many construction trades. Students are enthusiastic and are already giving back to the community. For example, in the wood working classes they are assembling desks and bookcases for local elementary school rooms. Graduates are hired by local firms eager for employees with proven basic skills. They are offered good wages, apprenticeships and on-the-job training. Demand for graduates far exceeded supply in the first two classes and there are plans to expand the program and make it self- sustaining by getting the businesses that benefit from the program to help fund it.

Iraq's various wars and the late insurgency took a heavy toll on the men of Al Anbar leaving many widows and orphans. One of the ways we are helping address their situation was by opening women's sewing centers, where they are offered training in sewing and tailoring. This is not a temporary fix. These skills can provide basic income and the chance to start a small home business. Graduates get a sewing machine and some basic materials upon graduation to get them started. Empowering women even in a small way that enable them to prosper in specially heartening given the plight of so many widows and orphans across Western Anbar.

A proven way to jump start small businesses is with small loans (microfinance). The microfinance program in Al Anbar made its first loans last November. The number now has reached 211, totaling almost $500,000 and 100% of the payments have so far been made in full and on time. Our team met the owner of a small tire repair shop who benefited from the loan program. He bought a computerized tire balancing system, which increased his customer numbers several fold while saving him time and allowing him to do a better job faster. We talked to another small merchant/manufacturer who creates custom steel rebar and angle iron for construction. When we asked him how his business would have been w/o the small loan program, he told us that he would clearly and simply not have a business at all without the program.

Iraq is certainly no paradise and but what is important here is that it shows what has been done, what can be done and what continues to need to be done here in Iraq. Behind the thriving shops and busy markets are wrecked buildings and damaged lives. Terrorists continue to lurk in the shadows looking for weak spots and openings. But Iraq today shows an unquestionably brighter picture than in 2006 or even back when I arrived just a few months ago in September 2007. The Iraqi people are proving resilient in the face of enormous challenges and demonstrating every day and many ways that if given a chance to improve their lives, they will take it and they will grasp at this new life with a vigor that we often do not see in even more developed situations. The people of western Anbar risked their lives to break free of the grip of AQI and the insurgency. Now they are building the lives they fought for. In our small way, we are helping.]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/perceptions_out_of_date/ 2008-02-14T13:54:00-05:00 John Matel serves as Team Leader of the Al Asad Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) declared Ramadi the capital of their caliphate in Iraq. That was only about eighteen months ago. Today Ramadi is the capital of resurgent Al Anbar, with thriving markets, internet cafes and restaurants. Maj. General Gaskin, who commands CF in Al Anbar, has said that the province is ready to be handed back to the Iraqis in March. He added that when he arrived less than a year ago, he never expected it to happen this fast. The turnover does not mean that the violence is over or that all our forces will all leave, but it does mean that the Iraqi police and security forces will be doing most of the day-to-day work of keeping Iraqis safe and it is incredible to anybody who knew this place last year.

BTW - I take this security thing personally, since I often trust Iraqis to keep me safe too.

From everything I see and all that I hear from those who lived here during those dark days when the insurgency burned through Al Anbar, the surge worked. Of course, success did not start and will not end with the surge. What the surge did was give us credibility - showed friends and enemies alike that we were committed to finishing the job. We had some advantages. The Marines had been working with the Anbari people and local leaders for years, so they had a base to start with. Beyond that, Al Qaeda in Iraq stupidly overplayed its hand, by murdering, maiming and generally oppressing the civilian population to such an outrageous extent that tribal leaders teamed up with coalition forces to drive them out. The surge was not sufficient, but necessary to finish the job and to create enough security so that ordinary people, just seeking safety for their families, could feel secure enough to do normal things like going to markets, restaurants and Internet cafes.

It is important to remember that the surge represented a change in emphasis and not merely an increase of boots on the ground. Our forces live in local communities, close to the people they protect and get to know. This ensures that the insurgents cannot just come back to again threaten civilians. Protecting the civilian population and winning their trust is the key to success. As security is established, rebuilding (or in some cases building) can begin. PRTs are part of a reconstruction "surge".

Our ePRT is the beneficiary of the improved security. My predecessor told me about his troubles just finding contractors not afraid to be seen talking to us. They had hard time finding someone just to lay a concrete walk to a city hall. This is a problem no longer. My colleagues and I travel all around western Al Anbar, an area the size of South Carolina, meeting local people and helping them with projects that improve their lives. On my desk today are proposals for projects involving things like upgrading electricity connections, helping local business associations get up and running, or refurbishing courthouses. The courthouses are particularly gratifying, since they represent the return of the rule of law. Just a short time ago, it was impossible to find judges willing to risk assassination to carry out their duties. Today they are dispensing justice openly in their own courtrooms. The picture I have included is a courthouse we helped refurbish. It rises out of the detritus of war and is a fitting symbol for what is happening here.

Al Anbar is still a dangerous place. We travel in armored convoys; our helicopters still feature the ubiquitous 50 caliber machine guns at the ready. But in the nearly four months I have been in Iraq, I have felt safe (as safe as you can feel bouncing up and down in helicopters) most of the time as my staff and I have traveled to every important center in western Al Anbar, and many smaller ones too.

I recently went on foot patrol in an isolated town called Nukhayb along with the Marines stationed in that area to protect pilgrims returning from the Hajj. This year nearly 10,000 pilgrims passed thorough this part of Anbar on their way to the holy city of Mecca. There were no incidents and the Marines are surprised at the almost compete lack of trouble. "Picket fences," the analogy to peaceful small Midwestern town, was the way one Marine characterized it to me. Around here Sunni and Shiite live together, intermarry and even share the same Mosques.

As we walked, we were constantly surrounded by curious children and some adults who, for unknown reasons, insisted on calling out the names of American cities or celebrities. Nobody was afraid. I noticed a brand new 4" water pipeline network line that recently been laid in trenches near area homes. The market was small but well stocked. I bought a wool scarf emblazoned with the Iraqi flag (it gets cold in Iraq) and some cookies from the local vendors. The scarf is great; cookies not so much.

We had gone to this remote area to meet with local leaders and assess the effects of the drought on agriculture, especially on the local sheep herds. Our ePRT can help with some advice and maybe a small grant to for medicines and minerals to enhance animal health, but what they really need is rain, something we cannot supply. The situation is bad; nevertheless, these problems of animal heath and crops are the normal problems of an arid agricultural community and can be addressed in normal ways. Things are returning to normal here and all over western Al Anbar.

I am no expert on the big events happening in world politics about Iraq. What I know about is the part I work with every day and what I am writing comes from what I see. I am grateful that I have been given the opportunity to play a small role in this fundamental change for the better in Iraq. It is well worth the discomfort and risk of being here. Iraq was horribly mismanaged for more than a generation. It will take time to rebuild neglected infrastructure or sometimes build it in the first place, but Iraq can and should be a prosperous country. It has the necessary energy and water, resources, soils and even more important - resourceful people. The surge gave us the possibility to help the Iraqi people build a future for themselves that is better than the dreadful past. I hope and believe that the Iraqis of Al Anbar,with our assistance, will be able to make the most of this opportunity. ]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/surge_iraq/ 2008-01-17T17:42:00-05:00 John Matel serves as Team Leader of the Al Asad Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq.

Not long after I arrived in Iraq, I wrote a post on my personal blog called, "Get a Life." I was trying to find something to do that was not work related. Nobody can work flat out forever. But there was just no place to go or anything else to do but work. We live in small trailers w/o bathrooms. The office is nicer than home, so most of us just stay at work. Beyond that, the Marines have a ferocious work ethic and an unrelenting positive attitude. The Colonel is working when I get here in the morning at around 8 and even if I leave the office at 11:45 (2345 to them) many Marines are still here. Of course, they take time for PT and other activities during the day. I do not mind putting in some time, but I resolved to adapt and I think I have.

First I carved out time in the morning for running and time for blogging in the evening. Running is a good way to relax and stay in reasonably good condition. A run around Camp Ripper is around 4 miles. I usually actually run only three and walk the last one. The Marines sometimes run past me and offer encouragement. They are trying to be nice, but it reminds me how much slower I have become over 30 years of running. The recent weather has helped. Summer temperatures are brutal, but we are currently enjoying "Tahoe weather". It gets cool at night and goes into the middle 80s during the day. It is sunny almost all the time. The blogging is important as a way to keep connected with people back home. (I am not referring here to the Dipnote blog, BTW.) I noticed that many soldiers or Marines do it too, or they use email list serves. This connectedness is a big difference from my first isolated FS post 20 years ago. Some of my friends and relatives regularly read my personal blog. Knowing that they are paying attention helps me be happier over here.

And you just have to take what moments of humor and grace you can find. Recently, for example, I went out for a few minutes to sit under a eucalyptus trees, across from the portable toilets. As I let the rest of the world go by - trucks, helicopters and men going into the green plastic outhouse - onto my I-pod came "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini" by Rachmaninoff. If you saw the movie "Groundhog Day”, you know this music. It is a calm and soothing. Life is made of such moments. It was funny. The soundtrack did not go with this particular scene, but my experience here is reminiscent of the "timeless" theme in "Groundhog Day".

The most important thing to do in a timeless situation is to mark progress or at least change. We have frequent travels and interaction with Iraqi local political leaders, sheiks and sometimes just ordinary people. It is easy to let all these meeting just wash over you, but the generally good practice of writing notes and "memcons" is also very useful for marking progress. In this case, what is good for work is also good for personal happiness. In an environment where you work long house seven days a week and the weather does not change much day-to-day, such milestones of achievement are essential. Besides, I am learning a great deal from actively listening to local concerns and aspirations with the intent of having to recall and write down the content later.

I live in Iraq, but not everything can be about Iraq all the time. I make time to read books every day. I admit that several of the books I read were still about Iraq, but I also read books about the Byzantine Empire (okay Iraq is nearby) forestry and climate change. I was also happy to learn that I have sufficient download speed to get audio books and I have been able to listen to Alan Greenspan's "Age of Turbulence" and Robert Reich's "Supercapitalism" on the way to chow or while waiting for helicopters or humvees. I spend a lot of time waiting for these things and it is good to use the time for something. The I-Pod is the best thing to come along for a person without easy access to large libraries, since in that small package hundreds of books or podcasts.

I find that I am reading and listening to more quality things here in Iraq than I was back home. When you see newspapers a few days late, you realize how much of the news is good only for a couple of days or even hours. If you miss the dip in the Dow and it goes back up, what does it matter? If it does not, what are you going to do about it anyway?

I don't know if this blog entry makes people more enthusiastic about joining the FS or coming to Iraq. At this point, it is just a lot less exciting in Iraq - and less dangerous - than people back home think, or than it was just a few months ago. Iraq is like any post or any place else. You can travel thousands of miles, but you always have to take yourself along. It is up to you to get a life and make it a good one not matter where you are. Living in the dust of Iraq just makes that clearer. ]]> http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/entires/groundhog_day/ 2007-11-29T15:25:00-05:00
John Matel is a career Foreign Service Officer (FSO) who is currently serving as the team leader of the Provincial Reconstruction Team embedded in Al Asad, Al Anbar Province.

I just finished reading a news article discussing some of my FSO colleagues' vehement and emotional response to the idea that a few of us might have directed assignments in Iraq . To my vexed and overwrought colleagues, I say take a deep breath and calm down. I have been here for a while now, and you may have been misinformed about life at a PRT.

I personally dislike the whole idea of forced assignments, but we do have to do our jobs. We signed up to be worldwide available. All of us volunteered for this kind of work and we have enjoyed a pretty sweet lifestyle most of our careers.

I will not repeat what the Marines say when I bring up this subject. I tell them that most FSOs are not wimps and weenies. I will not share this article with them and I hope they do not see it. How could I explain this wailing and gnashing of teeth? I just tried to explain it to one of my PRT members, a reserve LtCol called up to serve in Iraq . She asked me if all FSOs would get the R&R, extra pay etc. and if it was our job to do things like this. When I answered in the affirmative, she just rolled her eyes.

Calling Iraq a death sentence is just way over the top. I volunteered to come here aware of the risks but confident that I will come safely home, as do the vast majority of soldiers and Marines, who have a lot riskier jobs than we FSOs do.

I wrote a post a couple days ago where I said that perhaps everyone's talents are not best employed in Iraq . That is still true. But I find the sentiments expressed by some at the town hall meeting deeply offensive. What are they implying about me and my choice? And what do they say to our colleagues in the military, who left friends and family to come here and do their jobs? As diplomats, part of our work is to foster peace and understanding. We cannot always be assured that we will serve only in places where peace and understanding are already safely established.


If these guys at the town hall meeting do not want to come to Iraq , that is okay with. I would not want that sort out here with me anyway. We have enough trouble w/o having to baby sit. BUT they are not worldwide available and they might consider the type of job that does not require worldwide availability.


We all know that few FSOs will REALLY be forced to come to Iraq anyway. Our system really does not work like that. This sound and fury at Foggy Bottom truly signifies nothing. Get over it! I do not think many Americans feel sorry for us and it is embarrassing for people with our privileges to paint ourselves as victims.


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