Back in February, I wrote about President Bush's budget allocation toward funding a U.S. Civilian Response Corps. We finally have one. The Washington Times reports that Secretary Rice "inaugurated the U.S. government's first-ever civilian nation-building team Wednesday in a bid to learn from missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction efforts."

At last we'll actually be able to examine how "integrating diplomacy, development and defense" actually works in practice. The Times reports:

The "active" component, called the Civilian Response Corps, is a team of 250 federal employees from several agencies - diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators, agronomists and others.

Their primary responsibility is to deploy to crisis spots around the world within 48 to 72 hours.

"This is a mission that requires the integration of security, diplomacy and development," Miss Rice said at a State Department ceremony.

For the team's active members, the response corps will be a full-time job. Another 2,000 who have other federal jobs will serve as the "standby" component, said John Herbst, the department's coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.

About 37 percent of the active corps will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about 30 percent from the State Department and the rest from the departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Treasury, Mr. Herbst said.

Budget appropriations challenges persist for the CRC. Nonetheless, this is finally a functional, funded program and an intriguing experiment in what it will look like for America to deploy "smart power teams," if you will, to places that need a set of tools that only a diverse team with varied expertise can provide.