[thegreatbeast]

"Unsurprisingly," says Kaplan, "this has led to grumbling at NEA, with staffers complaining the Bush team has set up its own Iran shop and has been making end runs around the State Department's traditional bureaucracy." What's sad is that our own State Department has to be 'worked around".
The Bush administration is not the first to have felt compelled to do this. The State Department is an immutable impediment.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

And I think it needs to be reorganized, downsized, and sanitized from top to bottom, with the aim of getting rid of all the left-wing, hand-wringing deadwood that has accumulated there over the past 60+ years

[marron]

"Unsurprisingly," says Kaplan, "this has led to grumbling at NEA, with staffers complaining the Bush team has set up its own Iran shop and has been making end runs around the State Department's traditional bureaucracy."

Well, you could always pay a visit to the Iran-Syria Operations Group, and ask how you can help. Since your whole job is to help the president define and carry out his foreign policy, that seems to me like the right thing to do. Go offer to help.