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Agreed. But as I indicated, the question isn't whether you scale back the list of qualifying AOs, but which countries end up getting cut.
For example, Jordan is one of the countries being talked about, even though we may be on the verge of escalating our presence there in connection with the civil war in Syria. Also, as we have seen from Khobar Towers to 9-11, you often don't know just how imminent a threat is until the buildings are falling and the bodies being recovered.
I suppose you could create a lower pay tier for lower risk, but still risky areas. Qatar, for example, is not Iraq, but neither is it Germany.
I would also be concerned if political and diplomatic concerns affect the decision. In Benghazi, for example, we saw an apparent effort by the State Department to downplay how bad the security situation was so as not to call into question the wisdom of the Administration's Libya policy.
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