Diplomats at the American embassy in Baghdad on Monday pleaded to their state department colleagues back home to come to work in Iraq -- a posting seen as one of the most dangerous in the world.
"There are all kinds of opportunities here," said Patricia Butenis, the deputy chief of the US mission.
"There are people who think we live under a constant barrage of mortar attacks, but it isn't that way all the time."
The US State Department has not received applications for about 50 of 250 Baghdad jobs to be filled by mid-2008, forcing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to make a worldwide appeal for diplomats to serve in Iraq.
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