If there is one U.S. Mission that needs continuous staffing other than Afghanistan, it's really obvious if you know American foreign policy, and it's in the Middle East.

Certainly, there are a lot of people who wanted an extension of troop presence there, if that was also easier said than done given political constraints in D.C. and Baghdad.

That's spilt milk now, just like the complaints one hears from Career Foreign Service Officers about their time there, better however tham in an MRAP in Fallujah; those are the people who's being miffed at being passed over by a political appointee one would care about.

As to emails, who wants their email traffic read in a war zone with girls?

No one. They got married, and if that was a little incestous as to access, that's how its done nowadays, so lose the hypocrisy about a nice reportere more than likely too. They were young, and got married, bottom line.

As to the ambassador in question, being a lawyer is a qualification for many jobs, and if you would ideally have an Arabic speaker, there are other qualifications in an Ambassador, one of which is hitting the ground running as to knowing who's who, which Brett McGurk will know for sure, having been there or on policy teams for the last six years, and under two Administrations.

Presumably that's why the Obama people asked him to come back, and if the last ambassador to Iraq and more importantly Ambassador Crocker say he's good to go, he's almost surely good to go.

The other objections at this point seem to pale in comparison as to finding someone you could confirm in a reasonable time frame, important, since with Iran and Syria on the table as very serious policy issues and who knows what with Egypt and Libya, a healthy Iraq even if an unfamiliar one in Shia hands to a point with Maliki is a vital American interest, best served by as much continuity in policy as possible.

If anything, what is needed is to give McGurt as much power as possible, as it is fairly clear in this episode that resentments of the Career Officers that are understandable to a point but are more a problem, because they certainly aren't resentments understandable to the taxpayers and certainly not to those who had to live in the streets for seven months, or taught for years without benefits for $24,000 a year while answering all sorts of questions by USG officials on various policy matters in the Middle East for free, unfortunately.

The confirmation process for Ambassadors has long been too much of a football that impedes political control over the Career Officers of the State Department in a way that many think dysfunctional to the achievement of American diplomatic ends.

There is no American State Department Mission more important in the world than the Iraq Mission, save maybe Afghanistan, and to have emails released like this would seem to need something to be squashed, and instead repaid with what is needed in that Mission do to its complexity: higher levels of Managerial authority, and the waiver of as many regulations and Foreign Service Union rules as possible as to achieving what we can in Iraq with what time we have available as to a stable government that prevents an obvious potential collision between Shia and Sunni in the middle of the world's oil fields.

Other than some general, and McCrystal didn't work out so well that way as to temperment, there's not anyone realistically better than McGurt, and so confirming him as rapidly as possible is a bipartisan no-brainer, as he clerked after all for Rehnquist, and did his time there, in a zone of not trivial danger in the end, as to qualifications.

finis