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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Close The Baghdad Embassy?

By The Daily Dish
Nov 1 2007, 12:37 PM ET

Juan Cole gets up in Bush's kool-aid:

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Some sort of rump mission of hardy volunteers could be maintained. But kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed).

There is, in addition to the daily danger, no good escape route for civilian personnel from Baghdad. The troop escalation will be reversed by next year this time, and as the US draws down, the Green Zone is in danger of being overwhelmed by the Mahdi Army. The State Department employees sent there for two year missions are the ones who may end up in secret JAM prisons, as happened in Tehran in 1979.

Bush should not be allowed by Congress to commit this immoral act against the civilians who serve us so faithfully.

A report on the diplomats' revolt can be read here.



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