AFSA issued the following press release on Thursday, October 2, 2008:

The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) welcomes Secretary
Rice's announcement that the Department of State has now filled all of
its positions at the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan for the
summer 2009 assignment cycle with qualified, willing volunteers -- as
has been the case every year since those two diplomatic missions came
into existence. It is a tribute to the courage and sense of duty of the
people of the Foreign Service that our members, as well as a number of
Civil Service colleagues, have stepped forward without hesitation every
year to staff the embassies and provincial reconstruction teams in those
two war zones. These are our largest diplomatic missions in the world,
and they present unique dangers and challenges to the thousands of our
members who have volunteered since 2003.

AFSA hopes that those journalists, media outlets, and commentators who
erroneously reported last October that the Department of State had been
unable to fully staff the Iraq mission will now show as much zeal in
reporting that, in fact, every one of these positions in both Iraq and
Afghanistan for summer 2009 has been filled more than eight months in
advance. Those journalists did a great disservice to the Department of
State and its employees -- who have never shied away from hardship
service in some of the most dangerous places on earth -- and we hope that
these journalists will now set the record straight."

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