re: "Numbers"

CAA (that's me!) continued his response to Jeff Emanuel's post at RedState:, responding to Jack_Savage's comment of Thursday, February 9th at 10:14 PM EST(link).

Jack Savage said:

"Maybe it is because they really don’t do much of anything, and if they do anything, they don’t have a lot to show for it.

Example: You have the finest diplomats on the planet in Baghdad – 16,000 of them, as a matter of fact – and they can’t figure out a way to negotiate getting food shipments in a timely fashion? In a country we rescued from a dictator at great cost in lives and money? And their only strategy to achieve this objective is to whine to the New York Times?

And you seem to think they prevent wars and keep our enemies at bay?

Spare me."

My response:

"According to the original post (above), there _aren’t_ 16,000 diplomats at the Baghdad embassy.

“So the wizards at State has suddenly realized that constructing a 104-acre, $750,000,000.00 embassy complex and building up the embassy staff to 16,000 people (including 2,000 diplomats and several times more contractors), without running either by the Iraqis first, “may have been ill advised.” ”

So support staff is 16,000 (presumably that includes locally-hired Iraqi staff members as well) handling all the support, medical, transportation, SECURITY, &tc. that used to be handled by the U.S. military because those services are/were either unavailable in Iraq or untrustworthy.

Leaving 2,000, of which probably a fifth are specialists of one sort (security, management, communications, administration) supporting the other 80 percent. Figure several hundred of that remainder are program specialists or attaches of one sort or another who belong to “tenant agencies” (such as USAID).

Frankly, if even 2 or 3 hundred of that figure are actual State Dept. commissioned foreign service officers (i.e., actual diplomats) I’d be surprised.

And wasn’t VP Biden “all over” getting that SOFA negotiated? (crickets)

Lastly, as I was ranting to the missus earlier today, too many people working either for State or at our embassies are under the mistaken impression that the New York Times and/or the Washington Post are somehow “on their side,” probably because they foolishly hold the same sorts of demented transnational progressive worldviews espoused by those fishwraps. The truth is that the NYT and the WP are never happier than when they can embarrass those who serve our country, whether that’s in uniform or out of it."

2/9