understatement of the year

Among particular complaints in the Military, the officers cited a request from the office of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that military personnel temporarily fill more than one-third of 350 new State Department jobs in Iraq that are to be created under the new strategy.

At one level, the conflict is a cultural clash between a military that has ordered hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq in the last four years, and a Foreign Service that offers incentives for civilians to work in war zones but cannot compel diplomats to accept hardship assignments to places like Iraq.

State Department officials say they are using both incentives and subtler pressures to induce employees to go to Iraq. But from the standpoint of personal security, taking those jobs — many of them, by definition, outside the relative safety of the Green Zone — is widely seen as an unattractive career option. Now that must be the understatement of the year.