I was interest in the Foreign Area Officer Program. The deadline was fast approaching for my year group. I called the branch manager. I was already in Europe working with Special Operations and had basic ability in a few languages. His only real concern at that point was whether or not I had family. At the time many married candidates were have a lot of problems deploying to some of the more remote locations due to family issues. Also at that time due to the war everyone stood a 50/50 chance of automatically being selected for Arabic or Pashtu.