KEY POINTS:
Sorry, you're being posted to your worst nightmare.
United States diplomats yesterday bitterly criticised plans to force them to go to Iraq, with one calling it a "potential death sentence" and another pleading for psychiatric treatment for those who return scarred.
The comments surfaced in an hour-long meeting with department director-general Harry Thomas after the State Department said "prime candidates" for service in Iraq might have to accept compulsory one-year tours or risk losing their jobs.
About 250 people received notifications this week that they are in a pool who may be forced to go to Iraq to fill roughly 50 positions for which no qualified diplomats have volunteered to fill next northern summer.
They could be sent to the US Embassy in Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone", which is often hit by mortar fire, or to civilian-military provincial reconstruction teams that seek to nudge Iraq's 18 provinces towards greater government transparency, rule of law and other political milestones.
"I'm sorry but, basically, that's a potential death sentence and you know it," said Jack Crotty, who is nearing retirement after more than three decades in the foreign service, including a stint as political adviser to Nato's southern command.
Thomas reminded the group that as US diplomats they had agreed to work anywhere in the world. He said that some day US diplomats would serve in Iran and North Korea - countries with which the US does not have diplomatic relations. "We cannot pick and choose where we go. We cannot shrink from our duty. We have all agreed to worldwide availability."
Rachel Schneller praised Thomas for taking what she called a hard decision. She spent a year in Iraq. "It wasn't a tour without difficulties for me and it was a war zone and I came back wounded. I came back with a battle scar. I came back and was diagnosed almost immediately with post-traumatic stress disorder and I have been receiving treatment for that ever since," she said.
"I have to say that absolutely none of the treatment I have received for it came from the State Department. I asked for treatment from the department and I didn't get any of it from the department. But the treatment I have been getting has been excellent ... we have a moral imperative as an agency to take care of the people who do take that step to serve their country in war zones ... when they come back."
- Reuters
