[monday]

"So hopefully this incident was an aberration and Rice will clean house at State. I like Rice's thinking, but fear if she is tough enough for this cleanup job at State."

No one can clean up the state department. The reason is that employees cannot be fired for any reason. It is the same with all government jobs. The employees unions have made firing anyone, even for criminal behavior, next to impossible.

The other problem is that long ago intellectual elitists took over the state department and they are in charge of all hiring. Since they are all Ivy League socialists, they only hire other Ivy League socialists.

Political appointees like Rice come and go, but they have little or no effect on institutionalized bureaucracies like the State Department.

[strategofr]

Your points are valid and telling. However, there is a high level of employees (even at State) that are appointees, I'm pretty sure. These need to be cleaned out wholesale, quickly.

The deeper problem you refer to is disastrous and must be addressed by new laws. Unfortunately, we first have to educate the American public about the problem to generate pressure for such. Which, in our infinitesimal way, we are doing here now.

Mowbray does address these problems, to an extent, in Dangerous Diplomacy.