RUSH: ‘The State Department is dropping plans to force diplomats to serve in Iraq because volunteers have filled all 48 vacant positions at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and in outlying provinces, The Associated Press has learned. The department will announce that it is dropping plans for ‘directed assignments’ for Iraq once personnel panels give a formal approval to foreign service officers who signed up for the remaining three open jobs, U.S. officials said Thursday. … The announcement will be major relief for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the department’s senior management, who had struggled to quell a revolt among diplomats who questioned the ethics of ordering unarmed civilians into a war zone under penalty of dismissal.’
Now, I remember one of these diplomats said, ‘Well, what about our children? What happens to our children?’
Have you ever heard of the troops?
‘Well, yeah, but they volunteered.’
That’s right. They volunteer, and people like you are the ones besmirching them and impugning them! I don’t hear any compassion for their families and for them. What about their children? All I hear is they’re Bush puppets or this or that or they’re engaged in a mission that’s unjust and so forth. But the real thing about this — I guess they did get the volunteers; that’s what the news story says. However, ladies and gentlemen, I am not going to let this point go. These people are the ones who tell us that war is never the answer, never the answer. Diplomacy! You watch the Democrat debate last night or the last one in Philadelphia, the overwhelmingly used word (other than ‘Bush’), is diplomacy.
Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy! We gotta be better diplomats, better diplomats. Diplomacy is the way to stop war. Diplomacy is the way to prevent war. Both statements are false, and these people in the State Department, if they are such huge believers in the concept of diplomacy, shouldn’t they welcome an opportunity to go to Baghdad to the US embassy and show us how Mookie al-Sadr and the remaining lingering shreds of Al-Qaeda over there will respond to nice words? It’s such a golden opportunity for these people to show us how diplomacy works, and what do they do? (crying) ‘What about our children? You can’t send us to a war zone!’ Diplomats have been in war zones before. We’ve had diplomats in capitals.