Insider Quote: Fixated on Iraq

The singular focus on the war on terror and the battle for a new Iraq after Saddam has created a U.S. Foreign Service that is so weighted toward one country that the U.S. has largely abandoned the role it needs to play on the world stage. Having built the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, and staffed that monstrous entity, the Bush foreign policy fixated on Iraq. And the Foreign Service grudgingly went along with it, allowing embassies in many other nations to go understaffed.

Michael Varga
Foreign Service Officer (1985 to 1996)

U.S. should shape its policy for world, not just Iraq
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, January 30, 2009