Bush to Civil Servants: Go to Iraq

President Bush told members of his Cabinet Monday that they need to "step up to the task" in Iraq by sending more civilian employees to the country, the New York Times reports. Defense Secretary Robert Gates brought up the Cabinet meeting at a Senate hearing yesterday. Gates also let it be known that he was none too pleased with a memo from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requesting that the military temporarily fill 350 new State Department jobs in Iraq. “If you were troubled by the memo," Gates told senators, "that was mild compared to my reaction when I saw it.”

The Times piece zeroes in on the crux of the issue:

The mounting tensions between the Pentagon and other departments are in some ways the mirror image of those that roiled the government before the 2003 invasion. Then, State Department officials grumbled that the Pentagon was usurping its role in planning the postwar civilian occupation; today, the military is eager to see others step in.

Update 3:24 p.m.: TPMMuckraker has a "wingtips on the ground" perpective from a State Department insider on why exactly those Baghdad jobs aren't so popular.