Four days before a deadline for Foreign Service officers to volunteer to go to Iraq or face the prospect of being ordered there, the State Department notified employees yesterday that “about half” of 48 open assignments there for next year have been filled. The plan to order diplomats to take posts in Iraq if enough volunteers cannot be found — the first time forced assignments have been contemplated since the Vietnam War — has been controversial within and outside the service. “If I need somebody to serve in Iraq, they have to serve there,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview on Friday with the Dallas Morning News. [via WASHINGTON POST]