STUPID STATE DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES...DON'T THEY KNOW ITS A QUAGMIRE?

Americans are getting killed and kidnapped in Iraq, but at least one select group of U.S. citizens can't wait to start living there.

More than 200 of the State Department's Foreign Service diplomats applied for some 150 openings at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which is expected to open July 1 upon transfer of power to a new Iraqi government, department officials said.

But the applicant total doesn't tell the whole story. Interest in Iraq was so high that many job seekers took advantage of a rule permitting them to apply for more than one opening. They flooded the department with more than 1,000 bids in all, said Louise Crane, acting president of the American Foreign Service Association, the Washington-based professional group for the State Department's overseas employees.