WASHINGTON (AP) — Several hundred U.S. diplomats vented anger and frustration Wednesday about the State Department’s decision to force foreign service officers to take jobs in Iraq, with some likening it to a “potential death sentence.”

In a contentious hourlong town-hall meeting, they peppered officials responsible for the order with often hostile complaints about the largest diplomatic call-up since Vietnam. Announced last week, it will require some diplomats — under threat of dismissal — to serve at the embassy in Baghdad and in reconstruction teams in outlying provinces.

Many expressed serious concern about the ethics of sending diplomats against their will to serve in a war zone, where the embassy staff is largely confined to the protected “Green Zone,” and safety outside the area is uncertain while a review of the department’s use of private security contractors to protect its staff is underway.

“Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone,” said Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with NATO forces.

He and others confronted Foreign Service Director General Harry Thomas, who approved the move to “directed assignments” late last Friday to make up for a lack of volunteers willing to go to Iraq.

Full Story Here:
U.S. diplomats vent over forced Iraq duty

Our troops don’t have a choice, they have to be there, if you want PEACE then you have to have DIPLOMACY to make it happen, that endeavor requires diplomats, and that’s YOUR job, DO IT or get out of the business, suck it up and stop crying, life is NOT fair, this is the job YOU signed on for and you ALL sound like a bunch of wussies…

Anyone want to take bets as to how long before this bunch of cowardly asshats will be screaming that they REALLY DO need people like Blackwater USA to protect them??

“Who’s going to take care of our families if we get hurt or killed?”, that pretty much seems to be the biggest excuse we’re hearing for NOT wanting to go to Iraq and to that I have to say, why, the very same people that are taking care of our wounded troops and the families of our deceased troops, cheer up, you’re in good hands, don’t worry, YOUR government is in charge and will provide care for you…

As far as I am concerned the most serious point of this story would be the questions it poses??

Aren’t we being told, EVERY DAY, that Iraq is safer, Iraq is under control, we are winning hearts and minds, deaths and injuries are WAY down, we are IN CONTROL, isn’t that what the White House is telling us, every day?? Isn’t that what all the Bush Bots sites preach to us??

Isn’t that the rationale being used to BS the American people into being quiet as even MORE of our BILLIONS in tax dollars are wasted in an effort that is NOT going to end in our lifetime??

Well, my BIG question is this, IF Iraq is all those things, WHY are the guys in the Diplomatic Corps crying like little yard bitches that just got slapped?? You don’t suppose they actually know something that the Bush administration isn’t telling us do you?? Like maybe the REAL story about Iraq?? The story that I and many others have been trying to convince folks of for quite some time now??

Surely not…

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The view from Kinh Nguyen’s front door these days is nothing like the “abandoned cemetery” she saw upon returning to her New Orleans neighborhood two months after Hurricane Katrina.

Gone are the blue tarps and plywood boards that covered storm-damaged homes in Village de l’Est, a mostly Vietnamese-American neighborhood. Nguyen’s lawn, which turned dark brown after briny floodwaters killed her grass, is now a lush green. Streets once littered with storm debris are as clean and pothole-free as any in the city.

“They’re all back,” Nguyen, a 45-year-old mother of four, said of her neighbors. “Every home looks nicer, newer.”

Village de l’Est’s rebound has been a remarkable success story in this misery-stricken city. At the same time, for better or worse, the hurricane has brought profound political and cultural change to the community.

Language and cultural barriers long kept Vietnamese-Americans on the sidelines of the city’s civic scene after they began flocking to New Orleans upon the fall of Saigon in 1975. Since Katrina, however, they have been emerging as a force in a city where politics is customarily viewed in black-and-white terms.

“In a short period of time, they’ve had a major impact in the community,” said Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young, who represents a New Orleans suburb with a significant Vietnamese population.

The Vietnamese can and do adapt to a new environment quite well, and in rapid fashion, they work in a fluid situation better than any group of people I have ever seen and I am guessing that they are going to become a force to be reckoned with in the New Orleans and Orleans parish government in the near future, and I have to say, I think that’s a wonderful emergence of community and dedication on their part.

An estimated 90 percent of the 25,000 Vietnamese-Americans who lived in southeastern Louisiana before Katrina had returned within two years of Katrina’s onslaught, according to community leaders. They were among the first to start rebuilding their homes and reopening their businesses, and their community is recovering much more rapidly than some other parts of New Orleans.

Like many of her neighbors, Kinh Nguyen didn’t wait for the government’s help to repair her home, a modest, ranch-style house. She moved her family back in in March 2006, about 18 months before she received a federal housing grant.

AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq – The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. “The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability,” in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam’s deficiencies.

“In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world,” the Army Corps concluded in September 2006, according to the report to be released Tuesday. “If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely.”

Full Story Here:
Iraq dam failure could kill 500,000

If the Iraqis don’t think it’s unsafe, let them wait and see what it looks like when a wall of water hits their cities, and the Army Corps of Engineers knows a little bit about earthen structures giving way in over-stressed situations, you know, like levies and such…

Further reading in the original piece reveals that much has been done to stop gap the failure of this engineering debacle, not OUR debacle to be sure, but you can bet that if it fails, it’s going to somehow be OUR fault…

The Iraqis don’t want to spend the money to build a new dam and America shouldn’t have to spend the money to do it for them, it’s politics, plain and simple, throw in the fear factor to enforce the opinion, an earthen monstrosity that could possibly give way and kills a half million people, could possibly give way, possibly, and if it doesn’t give way the word on the street was, ‘It could have’…

I sincerely hope it doesn’t give way, some of that half million will be Americans if it does, but just how far do WE go to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq, especially given the fact that we have a rapidly aging and deteriorating infrastructure of our own that needs to be rebuilt??

America 1st… Every time…

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