This is an outrage; exactly what Congress and the American people need to know and should be up in arms about ! Our elected representatives cannot allow complete mismanagement and favoritism in government to continue if our country is to remain the world's strongest democracy !

It sounds like rewards for silence and doing what their "handlers" wanted done.

"Current and former officials were outraged" but not so "outraged" as to give their names. OK you brave LIBS, shoot from behind a curtain, as you always have. You were there when McCarthy spotted you and you are still there, behind the silk curtain of Liberalism and Anti-Americanism

The Bush Administration is so proud of Blackwater.

You have no idea what you are talking about. It is nice to see how ill-informed people are about the amount of hard work and back-door fighting that these two had to do to get the standards in place when there was no support for correct levels of staffing for managment, contract oversight, operational oversight, etc. If it was not for these two people you are right, we would not be in "such a mess", we'd be in the deepest pit of chaos with only a rat for a friend. Before you go posting poorly crafted opinions, maybe do some research and look at the blood these two have left on the floor trying to keep people safe in uncharted waters with little to no support. The things the report recommends were being said three years ago and have been said weekly to people who could not see past their nose. You are picking on the wrong people, here.

The Bush administration consistantly praises and reqards those who fail. Does this mean that these people were just carrying out Bush administration policies?

More corrupt gov't. It just keeps getting more ridiculous. When will these fiends be ousted?

More rewards for lying and incompetence, bet this doesn't make your evening news but Britney's exploits sure will.

If I acted like any of our "esteemed" gov't officials at MY job, I'd not only be fired, but I'd be criminally charged. This is SUPPOSED to be a gov't "by, for & of the PEOPLE," but I don't see "the people" getting much of a say (unless they're a corporate "person," in which case, they run everything, anyway.)
American slaves, take back your country!

You have to realize how the USG bureaucracy works. These two were approved for promotion (along with hundreds of other State department employees) by an independent panel in July. It just takes this long for the promotions to be approved (rubber stamped) and finally become official. No conspiracy here.

To echo some of what "Wake Up and Think said above: none of you that want to vilify these two career Foreign Service employees have any idea of what they have acoomplished or how the Foreign Service promotion process works. To educate you a bit: promotion from one grade to the next is awarded after reviewing the personnel folders and employee evaluation reports for a minimum of the previous five years of work, or back to the most recent promotion. Since most assignments are two years in length, these two individuals held at least three different positions in three totally different areas of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security for over a five year span. Also, the promotion boards convened in September, and their decisions are based on evaluations that were due to HR back in April. So even if these two career foreign servce employees were in anyway culpable (THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT), the promotion panels would not be evaluating them on something that for the most part erupted in late September and October. Although the promotion results were just released recently, the evaluations and decisions were made weeks, if not not over a month ago, and press reports and political grandstanding are not inputs which the panel considers! Further, heading OPO is a big responsibility, but as Director, there are at least three higher levels of management above this position that would have been responsible for oversight and effecting policy, and it is my opinion that the forced resignation of Griffin was the correct level to confront this issue, not scapegoating career foreign Service employees who may or may not been office director for an 18-month to two year period as part of their Foreign Service career.

First it was Spike Owen, the FBI official who ignored the field reports of Arabs learning how to fly a jet but not learning how to land one, getting a $20K bonus.

Then it was Pres. Fredo giving the Medal of Freedom to Bremer, Tenet and Franks.

Then it was the 2 Army analysts who botched the alumiunum tubes investigation given job perfomance awards.

Now this...How can the GOP keep on saying it is the Party of Accountability?

BlackWater did everything the neocons wanted.
They deserve the promotion...

I used to work in Overseas Protection Operations. Those two are completely incompetent and deserve to be fired!

Payola.

Now they may not out more Rice scandal.

Imagine 2 staffers to track $1+ billion for merceneries...

.

Hold your fire, all you liberal FSOs and others that have not had to protect an embassy and it's people under fire! These two agents did what was asked under tremendously bad conditions and scaled up ops that clearly is politics, not prudent security. YOU try and keep Americans alive and safe - they did and they and the DSS do it every damn day!

All the other b.s. aside, the program that these two managed failed, they should be held accountable, not curled in a ball in some corner crying. Once we achieve accountabilty in government we will feel real freedom, stop protecting incompetence!

These two dolts did not decide anything about security or work. They were government "OVERSIGHT" members. Their ONLY job was to watch for the very things that are now coming out to have occurred. These two never spent a second deciding anything anyone did anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were supposed to find and stop fraud, theft, embezzlement and malfeasance. Their only decisions were supposed to be whom to investigate for those things. Now do you still want to defend their performance?

These documents have been in Rice's possession since their writing years ago. Instead of asking the idiots in charge of Blackwater what was going on, she PROMOTES the idiots.

Smokr, you are absolutely wrong. The investgation of fraud, waste and abuse is a function of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) which every government agency has. OPO manages (mostly from a budgetary stanpoint) the local guard contracts at about 150 Embassies and consulates, including Baghdad and Afganistan from an office at HQ. Each of these Embassies and Consulates has a responsible Regional Security Officer and, by the way, and Ambassador or Principal Officer who has the front line responsibility for knowing what is going on, on the ground, on their watch.
Attempting to punish or blame these two is akin to punishing military officers for following the policy and orders that were issued to them by their commanders, who were passing them on from the DOD, Joint Chiefs, or the President.
Again, I agree that oversight needs to be improved, and people should lose their jobs, but this is absolutely the wrong rung on a very tall ladder to address these concerns.

Hold your horses wrote:

Attempting to punish or blame these two is akin to punishing military officers for following the policy and orders that were issued to them by their commanders, who were passing them on from the DOD, Joint Chiefs, or the President.

Last time I looked, following flawed orders from on high is not an excuse to avoid punishment from war crimes.

Keep Talking:
You are really grasping for an argument now.
My point was clearly made that these two people were not in positions to create national or departmental policy. I, in no way, implied that they were in anyway following illegal orders. And, since you took my analogy literally, and are attempting to invoke milatary law, I must point out that they are civilians, and did not blindly obey a direct order by a superior officer that they knew to be illegal. So, the "last time you looked" was not in the correct context or through the proper spectrum.
Please allow me to make a more simple (but not perfect) analogy for the simple-minded: how many mortgage brokers have been demoted, prosecuted, or otherwise punished recently? The international banks, investment groups, CEO's, CFO's and the entire "community" of sub-prime mortgage lenders are to blame for the current "crisis" in the mortgage/banking business - not the employees who carried out the policies that were dictated to them (i.e. grant huge mortgages to otherwise unqualified buyers)
And, once again, PLEASE understand that these two people are career Diplomatic Security Service Special Agents without political affiliations. They are NOT politically appointed secretaries, assistant secretaries, or friends of the President, and they likely began there careers during the Carter administration. Please direct your rage, scrutiny, and taxpayer outrage elsewhere, you are barking up the wrong tree here!

Why does everyone act surprised?
She could care less what people think.

StalgTC, Smokr, Bobby Stickers, et al...get the facts

My brother was a career DS used to be SY security officer and served for over 20 years as RSO at posts all over the world.
I am not sure how the structure of the State Department's chain of command is now but I do know how it was when my brother retired as Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office in 1983. I will quote from a 1989 Heritage Foundation document:

"Disdain for Security. The result is a low regard, even disdain, by the State Department for security officers.This is reflected in the pecking order at the typical U.S. embassy.The Regional Security Officer, the local representative of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, reports to the embassys administrative officer, the foreign service official with typically the lowest prestige in the embassy. What is more, the security officer is considered part of the support staff 7 State Department officials also tend to see embassies as extensions of the US slices of America transplanted abroad. They consider security measures as barriers between themselves and the locals."
Please if anyone knows whether this is still the structure of the chain of command let me know.