Following is the text of a cable from Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador to Baghdad, to Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State. Dated 31/5/07.

SUBJECT: EMBASSY BAGHDAD: ORGANIZATION AND STAFFING

1. Thank you for allowing Pat Kennedy to come out to Baghdad to look at a range of organizational and staffing issues we face. The findings in his report will be extremely helpful to us as we meet America’s most important foreign polic challenge. We are moving ahead here to implement those recommendations that fall within our competence.

2. Several of the recommendations are critical to our mission, and I hope they will have your personal support. One is recruitment and staffing. Simply, put we cannot do the nation’s most important work if we do not have the Department’s best people. HR has made heroic efforts to staff the Embassy, but to a large extent HR has been working alone. Pat has made some important recommendations to get us to a better place:

— A clear message from the Seventh Floor to all Assistant Secretaries that staffing Iraq is an imperative.

— Institutional responsibility for recruiting and assigning personnel should rest with NEA. All NEA assignments, as well as all bids by language and area of qualified officers should be held until there are sufficient bidders with requisite qualifications for Iraq positions. No more gaps will be permitted.

3. Another key recommendation is on security. We are currently operating under Inman Act standards. This is overly restrictive in the conditions under which we must operate. If the Department’s normal standards for operation were fully applied, we would not have a diplomatic presence in Iraq. We do, and we must. The Department needs to authorize military standards for security as appropriate.

4. In essence, the issue is whether we are a Department and a Service at war. If we are, we need to organize and prioritize in a way that reflects this, something we have not done thus far. Pat Kennedy’s report goes a huge distance along this road, and I look forward to working with you to implement his recommendations.

CROCKER

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