I couldn’t resist witting something about this when I saw today’s press release from HHS which announced that Terry Cline, Ph.D., the administrator of HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is leaving that post, and starting August 31st he will be the HHS Health Attaché and representative at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

On the serious side, I’m sure he will do good things to help improve the healthcare system in Iraq.  But on the less serious side, someone (maybe Jon Stewart?), needs to ask how did this happen?  How bad did he step on someone’s toes to get moved from Rockville, MD to Bagdad? Or was he just doing intensive and personal research into abusing substances, which led him to believe that Bagdad would be a nice place to be for a while?

While I certainly hope that Dr. Cline has a safe and productive time in Iraq…. but while he’s over there, given his expertise in substance abuse, maybe he can get over to Afghanistan too, since I understand they have a bit of an issue with poppies and heroin.