Congressional Testimony Link 101330SEP07

[RTK]

Online right now:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2005/04/12/VI2005041201139.html

[goesh]

Crocker has a measured voice with distinctive timbre and enunciation. It resonates well and is atypical of most career politicians. He projects considerable authority but how's his Arabic??

[RTK]

Crocker has a measured voice with distinctive timbre and enunciation. It resonates well and is atypical of most career politicians. He projects considerable authority but how's his Arabic??

He completed the 20 month Foreign Service Institute's Arabic School in Tunis in 1978. He's been abroad pretty much every since then. An interesting article (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-09-09-crocker_N.htm) from this morning's USA Today on his background.

[goesh]

20 months is nothing to sneeze at but I think he is interpreting the call for jobs in Iraq as a call for employment agencies. No wonder at the Co level Commanders don't have a slush fund to implement day work for a few of locals, but I'm drifting off topic a bit and maybe they already have such slush funds.

[Stan]

OK, it's the US Embassy's website (http://iraq.usembassy.gov/iraq/ambassador.html) (which nearly mirrors State's), but he seems to have his ducks in order.


Ryan Crocker was confirmed as Ambassador to Iraq on March 7, 2007. He assumed Chief of Mission duties at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on March 29, 2007, after serving as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan from October 2004 to March 2007.
He served previously as:
The International Affairs Advisor at the National War College, where he joined the faculty in 2003.
From May to August 2003, he was in Baghdad as the first Director of Governance for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from August 2001 to May 2003.
Served previously as Ambassador to Syria (1998-2001)
Ambassador to Kuwait (1994-1997) and
Ambassador to Lebanon (1990-1993).
Since joining the Foreign Service in 1971,
he also has had assignments in Iran, Qatar, Iraq and Egypt, as well as Washington. He was assigned to the American Embassy in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the bombings of the embassy and the Marine barracks in 1983.

He grew up in an Air Force family, attending schools in Morocco, Canada and Turkey, as well as the U.S. He received a B.A. in English in 1971 and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2001 from Whitman College (Washington). He is married to Christine Barnes, a retired Foreign Service secretary. They met in Baghdad in 1979.