When I was out of college, I spent a very breif time in the State Dept. My thoughts? What a bureaucratic and politically correct load of Bull-crap the whole thing was. That was 15 years ago, but I can say for certain a certain mind-set was ingrained in the US Diplomatic Corp. NY/DC left-wing, yuppie, politically correct. They all want to get posted to Belgium and France to be among their fellow anti-Americans. It is no surprise these clowns don’t want to serve their country in Iraq.
A guy I worked with was a co-pilot with Air America in Vietnam. He decided to apply for a State job and filled out the forms. The clerk took one look at the forms and sniffed "You don't follow directions very well". When asked what he meant, he replied, "The directions CLEARLY state to place a check mark in the appropriate box. You entered an 'X'!"
The guy said he couldn't get out of there fast enough.