New Ambassador Skips Pomp and Heads to Iraq

Most of America's high-profile ambassadors are sworn in by the secretary of state amid the crystal chandeliers and Corinthian columns of the Benjamin Franklin Room on the State Department's eighth floor. Fancy receptions usually follow for family and fellow diplomats in one of the most elegant settings in Washington.

Not so for Ryan Crocker, who is scheduled to reach Baghdad tomorrow to be sworn in as the top U.S. envoy behind fortified bulletproof windows and bomb-blast concrete walls topped with razor-wire coils -- with no formal reception to follow in Saddam Hussein's old Republican Palace.

It will be one of the most unusual swearings-in in U.S. diplomatic history, State Department officials concede. The big question is who will swear him in. Options range from Chargé d'Affaires Daniel Speckhard to the most junior diplomat in what is the largest U.S. embassy in the world, according to a senior State Department official.

Crocker opted to skip the fanfare in Washington to fly directly from the frying pan of Pakistan -- where he has served as ambassador since 2004 -- to the fiery war in Iraq. "He didn't think it made a lot of sense to fly all the way back from Islamabad and then go to Baghdad," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

But colleagues also say Crocker, a no-nonsense diplomat who prefers to throw no-socks-required parties over fancy diplomatic dinners, tries to avoid Washington whenever possible. He has served mainly in war zones since his first posting in Iran in the 1970s. He has also served in Lebanon and Syria as well as an earlier posting in Iraq as Hussein was making his play for the presidency.

Crocker replaces Zalmay Khalilzad, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who flew out of Iraq yesterday.

-- Robin Wright