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Just one more indication that really smart people can actually be really dumb. For almost a year now, I have been insisting that Rice do this nation a favor and resign. Since she came on board as Secretary of State that we have seen the Bush admin foreign policy crash into the dumpster. And now it seems the staffing and moral at the State Department itself has never been worse.

State Department hit by staff shortage crisis, Rice blamed

…The report by the influential Foreign Affairs Council, comprising senior retired American diplomats and ambassadors, said the department faced a shortage of 1,100 staff and that in the “first two years of Secretary Rice’s stewardship almost no net new resources have been realized.” […]

“Job one” is to obtain 1,100 new positions needed “to move the foreign service from where it is to where it needs to be,” said the council’s report, “Managing Secretary Rice’s State Department: An independent assessment.”

Reinforcing the view that Rice had to bear responsibility for the crisis, Boyatt said, “Every cabinet level officer has the responsibility to taking care of the institution he or she leads. “Every secretary of government has responsibility to at least lead that institution as healthy as they founded, if not to improve it,” he said.

The report said that some 200 existing jobs — mostly overseas — were unfilled and than an additional 900 training slots necessary to provide essential “linguistic and functional” skills “do not exist.” […]

“Morale of course is strongly impacted by the fact that we didn’t have enough people — which means that an awful lot of people are pushing it to the limit,” Boyatt said.

Rice is an unmitigated disaster in every single way. She needs to be back in the academic world where issues are discussed rhetorically and in theoretical contexts where she can do no further damage. Resign. Now.