a budget of 1 billion (and i'm sure there's a plus sign after that)

over 1,000 employees (doing the 'lords's work'). well they need all that shite to 'do the nation's most important work'????????????????? huh?

why are they building the BIGGEST, COSTLIEST, MOST SECRET embassy in the universe in iraq? this article isn't about the new embassy but the old. old or new it gives me the chills.

they want 'the best people' to work there. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT F**KING MINDS WOULD WANT to work there?

why isn't more money being funneled into health care (mental and physical) for our returning troops? why are we tossing them aside (yet giving bonus money to the powers that be on the va staff???)

if you don't see injustice, lack of morals, insanity here, well then, there is absolutely something WRONG with YOU
Embassy Staff In Baghdad Inadequate, Rice Is Told
Ambassador's Memo Asks for 'Best People'


By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer
Ryan C. Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, bluntly told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a cable dated May 31 that the embassy in Baghdad -- the largest and most expensive U.S. embassy -- lacks enough well-qualified staff members and that its security rules are too restrictive for Foreign Service officers to do their jobs.
"Simply put, we cannot do the nation's most important work if we do not have the Department's best people," Crocker said in the memo.
The unclassified cable underscores the State Department's struggle to find its role in the turmoil in Iraq. With a 2007 budget of more than $1 billion and a staff that has expanded to more than 1,000 Americans and 4,000 third-country nationals, the embassy has become the center of a bureaucratic battle between Crocker, who wants to strengthen the staff, and some members of Congress, who are increasingly skeptical about the diplomatic mission's rising costs......