U.S. planning to slash Iraq embassy staff by as much as half
The State Department is planning to cut the diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq by as much as half, the New York Times reports.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad told the Times that “over the last year and continuing this year the Department of State and the Embassy in Baghdad have been considering ways to appropriately reduce the size of the U.S. mission in Iraq, primarily by decreasing the number of contractors needed to support the embassy’s operations.” The staff at the $750 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has grown to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors.
The New York Times story about the planned cuts at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
