Trump administration asks top State Department officials to leave

[Right_in_Virginia]

Trump administration asks top State Department officials to leave
CNN, Jan 26, 2017, Elise Labott

Two senior administration officials said Thursday that the Trump administration told four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house" at Foggy Bottom.

Patrick Kennedy, who served for nine years as the undersecretary for management, Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, and Ambassador Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions, were sent letters by the White House that their service was no longer required, the sources told CNN.

All four, career officers serving in positions appointed by the President, submitted letters of resignation per tradition at the beginning of a new administration.

The letters from the White House said that their resignations were accepted and they were thanked for their service.

More:  http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/top-state-department-officials-asked-to-leave-by-trump-administration/

[The_Reader_David]

Perhaps they can find a competent orientalist, a younger version of Bernard Lewis, knowledgeable about Islamic history, fluent in modern Arabic and able to read classical Arabic, but non-Muslim, to put on the Middle East desk.  It's been plain as day to me that no one fitting that description has worked for State or DoD since at least 2001, since either warnings they would have given about the Sunni/Shia divide in Iraq would have been heeded and a follow-on force including a lot of military police would have been ready to keep the peace after the Ba'athists were toppled, or they would have written a tell-all book about their unheeded warnings and decamped to academe.