Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
They're not giving money to politicians (usually). They're giving money to organizations controlled by the politicians or their pals. Banning that sort of thing runs into massive First Amendment problems, not that I'm not sympathetic with the instinct.

That's easily cured with a mandatory minimum. Tracing isn't hard.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
"last couple days"? are you serious? do you even read what you post? hint the date of the article is not the date of the "scandal" coming to light.

To be fair, I forgot about the article about Honest, God-Fearing Republicans Prosecuting those Corrupt Democrats

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
That's easily cured with a mandatory minimum. Tracing isn't hard.

Wait, first amendment problems are cured by jail sentences?

I must have gone to a very bizarro law school, because I'm not following.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

My friend in the Foreign Service who had been told that he might be sent to Iraq instead of his scheduled next posting is now officially out of the running for that duty. He would have quit first, and I don't blame him. Woo hoo!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

• On Wednesday, President Bush telephoned General Musharraf for the first time since the crisis began and bluntly told him that he had to return Pakistan to civilian rule, hold elections and step down as chief of the military, as he had promised. Mr. Bush called him from the Oval Office at 11:30 a.m. Washington time, and spoke for about 20 minutes, according to the White House.
  
  “My message was that we believe strongly in elections, and that you ought to have elections soon, and you need to take off your uniform,” Mr. Bush said later, appearing at George Washington’s mansion in Mount Vernon, Va., with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. “You can’t be the president and the head of the military at the same time.”

NYT

Glad we're clear on that now.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
My friend in the Foreign Service who had been told that he might be sent to Iraq instead of his scheduled next posting is now officially out of the running for that duty. He would have quit first, and I don't blame him. Woo hoo!

My friend's brother who is in the Foreign Service and has volunteered to go back to Iraq several times and is there now and understands that he's working for THE FOREIGN SERVICE and that that sometimes involves, like, risk and shit, isn't dead yet! Woo hoo!

Seriously, wtf? It seems like the possibility of having to go to dangerous places is, like, part of the job. Not that anyone isn't free to quit any job they want at any time, e.g. if they totally rearranged our world and I got assigned to a sub that I find morally abhorrent (and that is in NYC, which I just abhor), I would quit -- but you can't really have the shiny bright "I'm a good person because I'm serving our country in the Foreign Service" coupled with "But other people can go to the bad places."

So, I'm happy your friend doesn't have to find a new job, but he's got no job-related moral high ground with me.

I am hating everything today.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
My friend's brother who is in the Foreign Service and has volunteered to go back to Iraq several times and is there now and understands that he's working for THE FOREIGN SERVICE and that that sometimes involves, like, risk and shit, isn't dead yet! Woo hoo!

Seriously, wtf? It seems like the possibility of having to go to dangerous places is, like, part of the job. Not that anyone isn't free to quit any job they want at any time, e.g. if they totally rearranged our world and I got assigned to a sub that I find morally abhorrent (and that is in NYC, which I just abhor), I would quit -- but you can't really have the shiny bright "I'm a good person because I'm serving our country in the Foreign Service" coupled with "But other people can go to the bad places."

So, I'm happy your friend doesn't have to find a new job, but he's got no job-related moral high ground with me.

I am hating everything today.

First of all, State has usually pulled people out of situations as dangerous as Iraq now is. Vietnam and Haiti are examples. So to suggest that they signed on to get sent wherever is wrong. My friend signed on to be a diplomat. If he'd wanted to be in the military, he would have joined the military. My friend has served in the Middle East, which is where he picked up the Arabic that put at risk of being sent to Iraq, so it's not like he is unwilling to accept risk. Obviously, there is a quantum difference in going to Baghdad.

Second, my friend has a wife and small kids. They live on-site with him -- but obviously they wouldn't in Iraq. That, too, is not what he signed up for. Indeed, the life insurance FSOs have does not cover them if they're killed in Iraq.

There was a third, but I forget it now.

My friend is excited to serve his country in his next posting, a place that many of us would not want to live.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by ltl/fb

Seriously, wtf? It seems like the possibility of having to go to dangerous places is, like, part of the job.

2. In college, a classmate (or maybe 1-2 years off) had a ROTC scholarship and was studying for med school. Then we invade Iraq, and the military put all docs-in-training on notice that they might call them in to serve in a medical capacity (not in combat). All of a sudden she develops a conscientious objection to the war in Iraq (but not, apparently, the money she was getting). I was ashamed to be at the same school as her.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
First of all, State has usually pulled people out of situations as dangerous as Iraq now is. Vietnam and Haiti are examples. So to suggest that they signed on to get sent wherever is wrong. My friend signed on to be a diplomat. If he'd wanted to be in the military, he would have joined the military. My friend has served in the Middle East, which is where he picked up the Arabic that put at risk of being sent to Iraq, so it's not like he is unwilling to accept risk. Obviously, there is a quantum difference in going to Baghdad.

Second, my friend has a wife and small kids. They live on-site with him -- but obviously they wouldn't in Iraq. That, too, is not what he signed up for. Indeed, the life insurance FSOs have does not cover them if they're killed in Iraq.

we had no diplomats in Vietnam? Wasn't the embassy the last place to go?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
we had no diplomats in Vietnam?

I didn't say that. I don't have his e-mail in front of me, but I think what he told me was that the size of the embassy there was cut down in response to the safety issues.

From a WaPo article on the issue:

• Although senior officials defended the plan, others contradicted McCormack's assertion that they had committed to be sent anywhere in the world.
  
  "People didn't sign up for the foreign service to go get killed in the war zone," said a Washington-based State Department official who volunteered and served in Iraq during the invasion but does not want to return.
  
  "In any other country, an embassy like that would be in evacuation status," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
  
  Morale is not helped by news from colleagues in Baghdad who say inadequate security has kept them holed up in the Green Zone, unable to interact frequently with the Iraqi officials and ministries they are supposed to advise....

eta: This anonymous comment on a blog echoes things my friend was saying:

• Unlike military officers:
  
  1. Their earnings are NOT tax-free in Iraq (that's also unlike non-federal Americans -- ONLY federal civilian employees pay tax there, military, contractors, NGO reps, business people, etc don't).
  
  2. They are not guarranteed health care for life like military officers. FSOs face potentially big problems if they are severely injured in Iraq.
  
  Even worse, a regular federal employee (say, a DoD or Dept of Education civil servant) has to fall back on just a worker's comp claim if they lose a leg to an IED while working in Iraq. After initial evacuation back to the US they have no access to the special trauma / rehab care the military does. Better hope your primary care physician knows to treat life-threatening war wounds as well as varicose veins. Likewise, better hope you have many months of sick leave built up.
  
  3. Likewise, while in Iraq you only have access to military health care for emergencies -- need a root canal and you're out looking for a dentist on the streets of Bagdhad. That's different for FSOs, however.
  
  4. FSOs are likely to have had no military training or other emergency training, can't carry weapons, and will tend to be significantly older and not necesarily in as good health as military officers.
  
  5. The current crop of FSOs has been recuited and retained generally on the assumption that they are not involuntarily deployed into war zones. I have no moral problem with saying we want a diplomatic corps we DO deploy like that, but, it's reasonable for them to feel like the terms of their (admittedly tacit) contract have been changed with corresponding compensation to them. Expect recruitment/retention problems and be prepared to increase benefits to make up for it.

If you look on the web, you can also find plenty of people who feel differently.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Indeed, the life insurance FSOs have does not cover them if they're killed in Iraq.

Interestingly, the same anonymous commenter whom I quoted above later says this re the life-insurance issue:

• Just to follow up, you are quite right that these sorts of problems are very solvable. As an even worse example, regular federal civil servants were very reluctant to volunteer for Iraq postings in 2003-2004 because it was widely but incorrectly believed, including by many managers, that your job-based life insurance wasn't valid in Iraq, due to an "acts of war" exclusion. I gather that isn't true when stationed abroad on official business. It took a year or two (!) for the administration to clue in that the issue was scaring away some volunteers and to get correct information widely disseminated.

This is coming from Dan Drezner's blog.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
I was ashamed to be at the same school as her.

Said shame lasting 20 seconds, until girl in sweatpants and baseball hat with amazing breasts walked by and friend passed moments later, asking if you wanted to go to the bar after class.

[SlaveNoMore]

Hank Chinaski
we had no diplomats in Vietnam? Wasn't the embassy the last place to go?

They were all in Cambodia. With Kerry.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
2. In college, a classmate (or maybe 1-2 years off) had a ROTC scholarship and was studying for med school. Then we invade Iraq, and the military put all docs-in-training on notice that they might call them in to serve in a medical capacity (not in combat). All of a sudden she develops a conscientious objection to the war in Iraq (but not, apparently, the money she was getting). I was ashamed to be at the same school as her.

I wouldn't go so far as to be ashamed to be at the same school, but yeah.

The State Dept. has to staff the embassy, apparently, and it's not like they haven't asked for volunteers. I guess it depends on loyalty to an employer in the difficult position of having to staff wildly unpopular jobs, compounded by the fact that your employer doesn't have the option to just move out of that business.

I would not have a lot of loyalty to the State Dept. under the W. Admin, possibly. But I wouldn't bitch publicly and act like they had no right to tell me that my job is going to be X. I would either do it or quit. And bitch endlessly, of course, but it wouldn't be about how my employer is morally WRONG to do it -- WTF is the State Dept. supposed to do? Leave the embassy massively understaffed? How would your friend feel if he had volunteered to go there, and was stuck there, and then everyone else refused to go even when told to, and the State Dept. said "OK, just cope with being really understaffed -- we can't make people go there, and no one else volunteered. So, well, sucks to be you."

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Interestingly, the same anonymous commenter whom I quoted above later says this re the life-insurance issue:

• Just to follow up, you are quite right that these sorts of problems are very solvable. As an even worse example, regular federal civil servants were very reluctant to volunteer for Iraq postings in 2003-2004 because it was widely but incorrectly believed, including by many managers, that your job-based life insurance wasn't valid in Iraq, due to an "acts of war" exclusion. I gather that isn't true when stationed abroad on official business. It took a year or two (!) for the administration to clue in that the issue was scaring away some volunteers and to get correct information widely disseminated.

This is coming from Dan Drezner's blog.

People don't know WTF their benefits are, and go by what they hear via gossip, which is JUST STUPID and they frequently end up making shitty decisions. So actually find out the facts with respect to your benefits, people, for fuck's sake.