In her press briefing on Friday, Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland
explained to the press corps that there would be no regular briefing
tomorrow due to the very busy schedule. There is a White House budget
roll out at 12:30 and a similar State department event at 1:30.
Mme. Secretary will also be hosting Turkish Foreign Minister
Davutoglu for lunch and a very important bilateral. As you know, our
alliance with Turkey has enormous implications in the region, so there
will be plenty for them to discuss, and as Victoria promised, plenty of
news.
Just my two-cents on the budget part of this: I hope Mme. Secretary gets every penny for which she asked. The State Department budget is less than 1% of the national budget. She has been "awarded" - (my tongue is deeply within my cheek) Iraqi operations heavily dependent on contractors because, guess what? We pulled the troops out! I recently saw an article saying we would be cutting personnel at Embassy Baghdad (the largest in the world) in half. The last thing I want to see is some failure in Iraq based on an inadequately funded State Department budget blamed on the hardest working Secretary of State I have ever seen in my life.
