I became an admirer of Ambassador Ryan Crocker since I read this Washington Post profile of him as he was being named to his current impossible job.

It included this:

“In late 2002, as the Bush administration prepared for war, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tasked Crocker and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns with exploring the risks of military intervention. The result was a six-page memo they entitled “The Perfect Storm,” according to an account in Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung’s biography ‘Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell.’

The memo bluntly predicted that toppling Hussein could unleash long-repressed sectarian and ethnic tensions, that the Sunni minority would not easily relinquish power, and that powerful neighbors such as Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia would try to move in to influence events. It also cautioned that the United States would have to start from scratch building a political and economic system because Iraq’s infrastructure was in tatters.”

That memo was not intended for public consumption. I know of no reason to question Ambassador Crocker’s integrity. But I also know of no case in which an ambassador has been expected to say publicly anything that was inconsistent with the line taken by the administration for which he or she worked.

Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.