Word: ambassadored
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Blackwater, a security company based in Moyock, North Carolina, has more than 1,000 personnel in Iraq, most protecting senior State Department personnel and others carrying out sensitive work in the country. Founded by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince, the firm is privately held and secretive. Last week U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified to the Senate that the State Department is overwhelmingly dependent on contractors like Blackwater for its security. As he put it, "There is simply no way at all that the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel...
...codenamed "Operation Alberich," were discussed at the highest levels. President George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were updated on its progress over the past year, and the two leaders discussed the operation during the meeting of G8 leaders of industrialized countries in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June. The U.S. ambassador to Germany and Michael Hayden, the CIA director, brought it up regularly with German counterparts...
...testimony this week from Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus on Capitol Hill appeared to offer a reality check to a legislature whose debate on Iraq often appears disconnected from reality. The "benchmarks" set by Congress to measure Iraqi progress and justify the U.S. deployment were criticized by Ambassador Crocker as unrealistic. Indeed, they are U.S.-designed goals that Washington has spent years cajoling Iraqi politicians to pursue. But aside from promises, there's been scant evidence of any genuine Iraqi intent to implement them. The Iraqi leaders are unlikely to believe that the U.S. will make its decisions...
Almost five years into the Iraq war, there's every reason to expect that the grim Iraq scenarios presented this week by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be largely similar to those that will be on the desk of the incoming U.S. President in January 2009. From what we were told this week, it appears likely that the next Administration will inherit an Iraq with nearly as many troops as were there in the summer...
...serried ranks of bar charts marching toward victory, which provided camouflage for the gaping holes and contradictions in the Petraeus-Crocker story. Crocker, for example, seemed particularly insistent on roping Iran into the scenario. "The Iranian President has already announced that Iran will fill any vacuum in Iraq," the ambassador testified. But Crocker also testified that the Iraqi Shi'ites were Arabs who had fought fiercely against the Iranians in the eight-year war and were very unlikely to cede control to their Persian neighbor without a fight. Petraeus described al-Qaeda in Iraq both as the greatest threat...