“Greater flexibility” to bury mistakes

Anytime an American diplomat or diplomatic facility is attacked, the State Department is required by law to investigate the incident. Unless, it turns out, the attack happens in the places such attacks are most likely to happen– Iraq and Afghanistan.

Justin Rood of ABC News reports that two years ago, the State Department quietly got the exemptions added to the law requiring “rigorous after-action investigations into incidents against embassies or personnel”. A State Department spokesperson tells Rood that changing the law was simply a matter of giving the Secretary of State “greater flexibility”. But the congressman who slipped the change into a bigger bill tells Rood the State Department asked for the change, because it considered Iraq and Afghanistan too dangerous for its investigators. That should calm the fears of those diplomats protesting the State Department’s plans for mandatory tours of duty in Iraq.

Tags: Afghanistan, after-action investigations, iraq, Justin Rood, State Department