No one wants to work in Baghdad

It appears that the State Department is having a difficult time trying to get people to work at the new US Embassy in Baghdad.  Next week, if the positions aren't filled, a number of diplomats will be forced to serve there:

Four days before a deadline for Foreign Service officers to volunteer to go to Iraq  or face the prospect of being ordered there, the State Department  notified employees yesterday that "about half" of 48 open assignments there for next year have been filled.

"This reduces but does not eliminate the possibility that directed assignments may be necessary," Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte wrote in an e-mailed update. Filling the remaining jobs is still "theDepartment's priority," he said, adding that he is optimistic that morewill volunteer.

Amid yesterday's report about how the State Department is in disarray.

The hundreds of millions that we put into this embassy illustrates the neoconservative vision of a permanent American presence in Iraq.