CQ's Jeff Stein reports that State Department staffers are signing up for service in rough neighborhoods:

Volunteers are flocking to the war zones now, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced this week, with slots in Iraq and Afghanistan filled through next summer."

The American Foreign Service Association crows:

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.

Duly noted.

Update: As one of those journalists who allegedly did a "great disservice to the Department of State and its employees," let me just point out that the department was posting open and withering criticism of the foreign service officers in question on its own blog. If the media owes American diplomats an apology, so do they. -Josh Keating