Two States, No Solutions

Barack Obama says the Israeli-Palestinian impasse is a threat to the United States' national security. But is he acting like it is?

BY JAMES TRAUB
FOREIGN POLICY
DECEMBER 17, 2010

Last weekend I was in Abu Dhabi, where I teach a class on U.S. foreign policy, and I was asked to do a Q&A on the Barack Obama administration's Middle East policy. Preparing myself, I knew what I wanted to say about Iran, and Iraq, and elections in Egypt. But I was flummoxed on the "peace process." The process had just ground to a halt with the administration's decision to abandon the mortifying effort to bribe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into adopting the very modest gesture of a 90-day freeze on settlements. I always try to challenge my audience's assumptions. But if my Emirati listeners felt that Israeli intransigence had driven the Palestinians to despair of the possibility of a two-state solution, I had nothing to say in response -- except that internal Palestinian divisions had made the problem worse.

It was a friendly audience -- this was Abu Dhabi, not Cairo. But afterward I was asked, "How can President Obama permit this? Can't he put pressure on the Israelis?" I thought: What's the right answer to this question? Is it: "He tried, but not hard enough, and then he gave up"? Or is it: "No, like in Afghanistan and Iraq, he's found that he has less leverage than he thought"?

You can make a reasonable argument that Obama has done about as well as he could with the hand he was dealt in Iran, in Iraq, and even in Afghanistan (though this last case has become harder and harder to make). You can't make this argument in regard to the peace process, where the administration has in effect admitted defeat, giving up hope for promoting direct talks between the two sides in favor of "parallel" talks, with an American mediator shuttling back and forth between capitals. Although this will remove the impediment of a settlement freeze Israel declined to accept, it will require compromises on underlying issues which neither side seems prepared to make, and offers accordingly little prospect of success. At the same time, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Gen. David Petraeus have stated publicly that the ongoing failure of the peace process constitutes a threat to American national security. The despair the Palestinians now feel, and the anger among broader Arab publics, is very dangerous for the United States. Not only al Qaeda, but Hamas and Hezbollah feed on the anger in the Islamic world over the plight of the Palestinians.

The White House has a number of potential alternatives, which I'll come to in a moment; the problem is that the Palestinians don't. I asked Rami Khouri, a Palestinian-American intellectual who directs a public policy institute at the American University in Beirut, what he felt Palestinians could or should do at this point. "There's zero leverage on our side," he said. "If this completely fails, I think the likelihood is you're going to get intense pressure within Palestinian society for a reconfigured politics -- maybe a national unity government, maybe a reactivation of the PLO, maybe resistance through peaceful means or military means."

As yet, there are no signs of a return to violence in the West Bank, only scattered talk of civil disobedience. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas fears that violence would discredit his own government and strengthen Hamas. As for the proposed "national unity" government, Khalil Shikaki, head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Social Science Research in Ramallah, told me that Abbas views reconciling with Hamas as tantamount to cohabitating with a wolf. "Fatah and Hamas perceive as each other as the most significant threat they confront," says Shakiki. But how long can Abbas and his government survive rising public anger and disillusionment? This, in fact, is the problem with Thomas Friedman's recent suggestion that the best way for the United States to advance the cause of peace at this moment of stalemate is to "just get out of the picture" and force both sides to contemplate the nightmare scenarios before them. For the Netanyahu administration, any nightmare scenario appears to lie in a future beyond the prime minister's own political horizon; the status quo is fine. But it is precisely this prospect which will increase the pressure for resistance inside the Palestinian territories.

Abbas doesn't want to be "reconfigured" out of power. He will probably continue to build the institutions of Palestinian statehood, which Washington has encouraged and Israel has tolerated. Perhaps the Obama administration can press Tel Aviv to advance that project with more cooperation on security issues: fewer checkpoints and greater ease of movement. But Abbas's goal is to execute an end-run on the failed peace process by gaining unilateral recognition for Palestine's statehood. Brazil and Argentina have recently granted such recognition, though the European Union has said that it would do so only when "appropriate." This does, indeed, sound like a real form of leverage, though the state for which Abbas will be seeking recognition will remain strictly hypothetical until Palestine and Israel can agree on its borders. The real goal would be to gradually "delegitimize" what the Palestinians view as Israel's illegal occupation of its territories.

Indeed, international delegitimation may be the most powerful weapon the Palestinians have. The West Bank leadership will keep raising accusations that Israel is violating international law, whether through its blockade of Gaza or its commando raid last May on the flotilla seeking to break the blockade, in the hopes of shifting global public opinion and thus raising the pressure on Israel. Nathan J. Brown, a Middle East expert at George Washington University and a pronounced skeptic of the peace process, suggests that the "South Africanization of Israel, if coupled with a domestic nonviolent campaign," might make the status quo far less acceptable to Israelis.

Israel, of course, has been living with delegitimation for a long time, and is prepared to keep doing so. But is the Obama administration prepared to continue acting as Israel's sole bulwark against the world? Officials have steadfastly defended Israel from criticism and backed off the demand for a settlement freeze, even as their own frustration has mounted. Netanyahu has now killed Plan A. Plan B, the parallel talks, will finally allow the administration to put its own proposals for borders and perhaps the other "final-status" issues on the table. Maybe something will come of that; but it's unlikely. The two sides are becoming less, not more, prepared to make painful sacrifices.

The Netanyahu government has gotten very deft at stringing Washington along without explicitly saying no. What if that happens again with the parallel talks? Is the Obama administration prepared to do something that would put real pressure on Tel Aviv? The answer is almost certainly no. There are no signs that Clinton or others are leaning in this direction, and with an incoming Congress even more primal in its support for Israel than the current one, the White House is unlikely to risk the political costs of tightening the screws on Israel. And yet Israel's intransigence ensures that the "new beginning" with the Middle East that Obama famously promised in his Cairo speech of June 2009 will not happen, with all the attendant consequences for America's standing in the region. Is that really acceptable?

If the White House fears the consequences of Palestinian efforts at applying leverage, whether through violence or civil disobedience or "South Africanization," then it must find leverage of its own. Certainly, it has a lot more sticks and carrots than the Palestinians do. Should the administration begin to apply conditions to U.S. aid, as the blogger M. J. Rosenberg recently proposed? Should it open up channels with Hamas, as others suggest? Should it stop automatically rushing to Israel's side every time its ally is accused of violating international law? Far less controversially, what about going public with a proposed map of the two states, either directly or through the medium of the United Nations? Both the Netanyahu government and Hamas would be likely to reject the proposal, but it might galvanize publics on both sides, thus strengthening Abbas's hand and weakening Netanyahu's.

If the Obama administration really believes that the impasse in the Middle East is a national security threat for the United States, than Obama will have to mobilize American public opinion behind whatever action he chooses to take. He will have to explain that this is not a question of pitting American interests against Israeli ones, but of acting in a way that ensures the long-time security of both states. In the Cairo speech, he eloquently addressed the hopes of the Middle East. Now he must face the equally difficult, and equally crucial, task of addressing the public at home.

James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of, most recently, The Freedom Agenda. "Terms of Engagement," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly.

For $250M, Nigeria drops bribery charges against Cheney, Halliburton

USA TODAY
Dec 17, 2010

Vice President Cheney at the National Press Club on June 2, 2008. In exchange for $250 million, Nigeria has dropped bribery charges against him, eight others and Halliburton, the company he headed before becoming vice president in 2000.
CAPTION
By Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images
Nigeria announced today that in exchange for $250 million, the African nation has dropped bribery charges against Dick Cheney, eight others and Halliburton, the oil-services company he headed before becoming vice president.

The case involves an alleged 10-year, $182 million cash-for-contract scandal involving a four-company joint venture seeking to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Bonny Island in southern Nigeria.

African and U.S. media say Halliburton and Cheney have not commented on the deal, which the head of Nigeria's anti-corruption agency said was offered by Texas-based Halliburton. When news of the impending charges surfaced two weeks ago, Cheney's lawyer called the allegations "entirely baseless," saying, "The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated that joint venture extensively and found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton."

As The Wall Street Journal points out, "U.S. regulators collected $1.28 billion in penalties and criminal fines in the Bonny Island case after settling charges of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that bans the bribery of foreign officials to obtain business."

Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said that the $250 million would include roughly $130 million frozen in a Swiss bank, and that remainder would be paid as fines, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday. But a source told AFP $100 million was in Switzerland and $30 million was in Monaco, saying the money was paid to an intermediary but never passed on as part of the bribery scheme.

Russian oil baron's trial postponed until Dec. 27

By Kathy Lally
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 15, 2010; 4:35 AM

MOSCOW -- Reporters and international observers who arrived at court here early Wednesday morning, hoping to get a seat for the resumption of the trial of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, found a piece of paper tacked to the courtroom door. The proceedings, it said, would be postponed until Dec. 27.

Judge Viktor Danilkin announced the decision in a fax to Moscow's Khamovnichesky Court, where he was supposed to begin rendering a verdict in the second trial of Khodorkovsky. The oil baron, once Russia's wealthiest man, was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to eight years in prison after getting on the wrong side of former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

With his sentence due to expire in October 2011, new charges were brought against him, apparently to keep him behind bars during the 2012 presidential election.

On Tuesday, a roster of world leaders and intellectuals sent President Dmitry Medvedev an open letter in which they suggested that if Khodorkovsky is convicted yet again, the world's confidence in Russia's commitment to justice will suffer.

"We cannot stand idly by when rule of law and human values are being so openly abused and compromised," said the letter, whose more than 50 signatories included former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. "Stable and reliable partnerships with Russia can exist only where our fundamental common values are shared and applied."

The letter was addressed to Medvedev not only because, as president, he is guarantor of the constitution but also because he has made it his mission to modernize and open up Russia. Yet many here anticipate that Khodorkovsky will be convicted, with the only question being whether he will be given the 14-year sentence prosecutors want, or a lesser term.

Khamovnichesky Court spokeswoman Natalya Vasilyeva would not give further details on the unexpected postponement of the Khodorkovsky trial Wednesday, telling the Interfax news agency, "The court is not explaining the reasons [behind it]."

By announcing the decision to delay the verdict until Dec. 27 by fax, Vasilyeva said, Judge Danilkin did not violate the consultation room secrecy.

Muslim employees of D.C. hotel say they were barred from floors where Israelis stayed

By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 14, 2010; 9:20 PM

Muslim employees of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington said they felt discriminated against after being barred over the weekend from floors where an Israeli delegation was staying, a Muslim advocacy group said.

One hotel worker whose duties involve going to all the hotel's floors said he was preparing for his shift Friday when his supervisor told him to steer clear of the eighth and ninth floors, where Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his delegation had booked rooms.

"I said, 'Why?' " said the worker, who is Muslim and wanted to remain unidentified to protect his job. He said his supervisor told him, "They're Israelis there, and they don't want no face-to-face with Muslims."

The hotel's general manager, Amanda Hyndman, said the hotel rearranged some shifts and told some workers not to come in after a routine State Department background check found "irregularities" in the checks of 12 employees.

"We don't know the reasons why," Hyndman said, adding that not all the people on the list were Muslim. She said she did not know whether any Muslim employees were allowed to work on the eighth and ninth floors over the weekend.

After receiving a letter Tuesday from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, Hyndman said the hotel planned to investigate the incident. "We uphold our policies of anti-discrimination," she said.

An official at the Israeli Embassy said that "as a policy, the embassy does not discuss the logistical arrangements for visiting Israeli officials."

A State Department official said routine background checks are conducted on people who "may have access to, or be working in, the vicinity of the official we are protecting." The official said that "at no time do these checks include questions regarding religious or political affiliation" and that the same standards are applied for for all delegations.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, said that the organization was waiting for a formal response from the hotel and that it might consider litigation. "We need to determine what criteria were used to remove these people from their positions," he said. "It's of concern to us that there's at least a perception that they were singled out because they were Muslim or Middle Eastern."

The one worker said that after he was barred from the floors in question, co-workers teased him about being a terrorist.

"In the cafeteria, they were looking at me, laughing, saying: 'Ah, they don't want you there. They maybe think you have a bomb in your belly,' " said the worker, who came to the United States from Africa more than two decades ago.

He said he had worked in proximity to other VIPs, such as George W. Bush, with no security concerns.

"I don't care about Israel. To me, it's just another country," he said. "I work for [the hotel] 12, 14 hours a day, and they profile me like I'm a criminal, like I'm going to harm them. I'm like, 'If I'm going to harm them, why would you keep me in your hotel even one day?' "

In a similar case in 2004, a Muslim security guard at the Madison Hotel was told to stay away from the 10th floor while an Israeli delegation was there. In that case, the hotel's general manager said the request was made by security units guarding the delegation.

Futuristic weapon undergoes Navy tests

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2010; C04

The red and yellow warning flags were out. The gun range was cleared. The klaxon sounded.

"System is enabled," the voice on the speakerphone said. There was a pause, then a distant thud that could be felt through the floor.

"Gun is fired," the voice said.

Inside a cavernous building at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., on Friday, a gigantic pulse of electricity hurled a 20-pound slug of aluminum out the barrel of an experimental gun at seven times the speed of sound.

The slug trailed a pillar of fire as it left the weapon and the building, illuminating the surrounding woods like a giant flashbulb. It streaked down range, generating a small sonic boom, and traveled about 5,500 feet before tumbling to the ground harmlessly.

In an adjacent building, there was a round of applause from observing scientists.

It was the latest test of the Navy's electromagnetic railgun - a futuristic weapon that is right out of the latest video war game and could one day change the face of Naval warfare.

Roger Ellis, the railgun program manager, said people "see these things in the video games, but this is real. This is what is very historical."

The gun is fired with a huge jolt of electricity that can propel a round more than 100 miles and at such velocity that it does not need an explosive warhead.

Two tests were conducted Friday - the first of which the Navy said generated a world record 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel. The second shot, witnessed by reporters, produced 32 megajoules.

Forty-five minutes after the second shot, a part of the battered bullet that was retrieved from the range was still warm to the touch.

The Navy hopes the railgun might bring a sci-fi level of range and firepower to its fleets of the future.

"It's exhilarating," Elizabeth D'Andrea, the railgun project's strategic director, said after the test.

The gun itself doesn't look much like a gun. It consists of two rails, along which a surge of electricity runs. They are bolted inside a long oblong box the length of a tractor trailer.

Bundles of thick black cables feed into one end of the box, where the slug is loaded between the rails. When the power is fed through the rails it creates a surge that flings the slug along and out the muzzle at tremendous speed.

Charles Garnett, the railgun project manager at Dahlgren, said it gets its power the same way a pocket camera builds up energy to operate its flash, but on a much larger scale.

The use of electricity to power such a round would change the way naval guns have been fired with explosive propellants like gunpowder for centuries, the Navy said.

The electromagnetic railgun was once a focus of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars." It was a seen as a weapon that might shoot down incoming nuclear missiles.

A quarter-century later, the Navy hopes it might soon provide a ship fast, new, long-range fire power.

"It's a very important technology," said Rear Adm. Nevin P. Carr Jr., chief of Naval Research, although "this is not a weapon that's going to be here tomorrow."

Carr, in a telephone interview Thursday, said it also makes for an excellent defensive weapon against such things as enemy cruise missiles.

Indeed, the Navy railgun project's Latin motto is "velocitas eradico," roughly "speed destroys."

Carr said the Navy had been working toward a railgun that could fire a 64-megajoule shot, with a range of 200 miles. "I am not as focused on that number today," he said. "We're more interested in getting capability to the fleet sooner."

He said he would like to see a railgun demonstrated at sea by 2018 and deployed on ships in the early 2020s. After that, further research could make the gun even more powerful. He said the project has cost about $211 million.

The first railgun test at Dahlgren took place in 2006, the Navy has said.

Carr said a ship with railguns would need no conventional propellant to fire the weapon, because the non-explosive projectile would be fired with a huge jolt of electricity. That would make the ship safer for the crew and allow the vessel to carry 10 times more ammunition, he said.

"It's more than just a better way to push a bullet out the barrel," he said. "Another point . . . is a railgun is not a gun. It's a launcher."

Carr said the "bullet" is hurled into the atmosphere in seconds and can descend on a target in minutes, at a speed of about Mach 5. "That's pretty juicy technology," he said.

How leaks could undercut diplomacy

The Washington Post

The cache of secret State Department cables exposes the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy in Washington and around the world. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the leak erodes trust among nations, but she is "confident" that U.S. partnerships would withstand the challenges posed by the revelations. Here is a look at statements made about selected countries and leaders.

Putin

Russia

What the cables said

A U.S. diplomat in Moscow discussed the relationship between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a late 2008 cable, saying Medvedev “plays Robin to Putin's Batman.” Another cable called Putin the “alpha dog.”

the reaction

The Kremlin responded coolly, dismissing any need to comment on “fictional Hollywood characters” in the Batman-and-Robin analogy. But Russian commentators said Putin would probably be flattered and that Russians do not need WikiLeaks to tell them Putin is the top dog.

Sarkozy

France

What the cables said

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is described as “thin-skinned and authoritarian,” with a tendency to rebuke his subordinates and the French prime minister. A top Sarkozy aide on national security, Jean-David Levitte, is quoted as saying Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is “crazy” and is turning one of Latin America's richest countries into “another Zimbabwe.” Levitte also describes Iran's government as “fascist.”

the reaction

The French Foreign Ministry called the leaks “irresponsible” and said they jeopardize international relations and people's safety. But it refused to confirm that French authorities made any of the comments attributed to them.

Merkel

Germany

What the cables said

A March 2009 cable to President Obama before his bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel described her as “methodical, rational, and pragmatic” but suffering from a crisis in leadership. It said that “when cornered, Merkel can be tenacious but is risk averse and rarely creative. This suggests she will remain a very circumspect Ally until the election.”

the reaction

Merkel's spokesman, Steffan Seibert, said Berlin regrets the leaks because they could endanger Western interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. But he said the revelations will have little impact on U.S.-German relations despite comments painting Merkel as an uninspired leader.

Ahmadinejad

Iran

What the cables said

Neighboring Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, fear that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and want the United States to take action to stop that program.

the reaction

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged that the documents were deliberately leaked by the United States as part of “an intelligence game, a propaganda war,” and said Iran would not “fall in this trap.” But the leaks appeared likely to increase tensions between Iran and its Persian Gulf neighbors.

Iraq

What the cables said

One cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad describes how Iran is “arguably the most influential regional power seeking to shape and influence the outcome of Iraq's [parliamentary] election,” and warns against the type of coalition that is currently working to form the Iraqi government.

the reaction

Iraq's foreign minister said the leaks have “poisoned” delicate efforts to form a new coalition government. Before the release, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said a leak would be an “awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people.”

Netanyahu

Israel

What the cables said

In meetings with congressional delegations, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, estimated that there was a window between six and 18 months “in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable,” and after that, “any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage.”

the reaction

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel was not harmed by the leaks. He said the disclosures proved that Arab states privately share its concerns about the Iranian nuclear program, and he expressed hope that the revelations could build momentum for action.

Abdullah

Saudi Arabia

What the cables said

Saudi King Abdullah is quoted as calling Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister of neighboring Iraq, a “liar” and saying he would never support him. Abdullah also wants the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” in Iran, apparently by attacking Tehran's nuclear program. A senior Saudi official warns that Arab states would develop their own nuclear weapons if Iran acquired atomic bombs.

the reaction

Saudi officials have not commented publicly, but the leaks in part reflect fears that a more powerful, Shiite-ruled Iran could stir unrest among Shiite minorities in the region's Sunni-led sheikdoms. While U.S. military action against Iran could be tremendously destablizing, it could benefit Saudi Arabia and other oil producers in the short term by driving crude prices sky high.

Karzai

Afghanistan

What the cables said

One cable describes Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “extremely weak,” paranoid and “easily swayed” by those who reported bizarre stories or plots against him. Another says his half brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the main power broker in Kandahar province, “is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker.”

the reaction

The Afghan government called the leaks “unfortunate” but noted that the U.S. criticism has been reported previously. A presidential spokesman said the documents held no surprises and that “we don't see anything substantive that will strain the relationship", with the United States.

Pakistan

What the cables said

A cable from 2009 describes failed efforts by U.S. officials to remove highly enriched uranium from Pakistan because of the poor perception of the United States in the country. A 1999 cable complained that Osama bin Laden is “an Islamic hero because the U.S. has named him 'public enemy number one.'”

the reaction

Pakistan decried the release and challenged the accuracy of some of the cables. A senior Pakistani official said the revelation of the diplomatic cables “will only feed further paranoia” about U.S. designs in Pakistan.

Kim Jong Il

North Korea

What the cables said

North Korea is accused of shipping 19 advanced missiles to Iran, potentially giving the Islamic Republic the ability to hit cities in Western Europe. Pyongyang also has been sending missile components to Iran through China, but Beijing has apparently dragged its feet in responding to U.S. requests to stop the illicit arms trafficking. U.S. and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects of a North Korean collapse and reunification with South Korea.

the reaction

The leaks could complicate the already dim prospects of renewing talks with North Korea and fuel the rising tensions between North and South, while contributing to calls for increased Chinese action to rein in North Korea.

A breakdown of the 251,287 diplomatic cables

The documents date to 1966, though most were written in the past few years and some as recently as February. A look at the cables sent by the State Department and U.S. diplomatic missions, based on WikiLeaks' analysis.

Where the cables came from

Which countries they mentioned

Top 10 countries mentioned in the cables, by number of mentions

What they talked about

Top 10 topics discussed in the cables, by number of mentions

Anatomy of the leak

How WikiLeaks released the confidential documents into the public domain:

AUGUST

WikiLeaks provided four foreign news organizations with access to tens of thousands of secret State Department cables. The cache was allegedly given to them by a U.S. Army private. While the New York Times was given access to previous troves, WikiLeaks snubs the paper this go around, possibly over an unflattering profile of founder Julian Assange.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER

Britain's Guardian newspaper quietly passed the Times the raw material. The Times agreed to coordinate
the release of its stories
about the cables with
the Guardian and the three
other news organizations.

NOV.28: THE RELEASE

The five news organizations
began publishing articles based on the
trove of documents.

For the general public, WikiLeaks published some 20 cables on its site, in the first of what will be many releases over several months. By Tuesday, WikiLeaks had released 294 cables, just 0.1% of the total number of documents.

Cable: Pfizer hired investigators to press Nigeria to drop drug suit

By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 11, 2010; 6:20 PM

Pfizer hired investigators to dig up dirt on Nigeria's then-attorney general early last year in an effort to pressure him to drop a $6 billion lawsuit against the company, according to a classified U.S. diplomatic cable.

The high-profile litigation, which stemmed from a 1996 drug experiment conducted on perilously ill children, was settled privately after the meeting that led to the April 20, 2009, cable.

The cable was released last week by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks and represents just the latest twist in the case's 14-year saga. In a statement, Pfizer called the new allegations "simply preposterous."

The Pfizer drug trial, whose tale has been compared to the plot of the Academy Award-winning movie "The Constant Gardener," has become notorious since its details were first made public in a 2000 investigative series in The Washington Post, and in a follow-up investigation in 2006 that led to homicide charges against the company.

In 1996, Pfizer's researchers selected 200 children at an epidemic hospital in Nigeria, then gave about half of them an untested oral version of the antibiotic Trovan. The other children were given a comparison drug. Researchers did not obtain signed consent forms, and medical personnel said Pfizer did not tell parents their children were getting an experimental drug. Pfizer's lead investigator later acknowledged that he personally created and backdated a key ethics approval document.

Eleven children died during the trial and others suffered disabling injuries. Pfizer said it broke no laws and that the deaths and other problems resulted from meningitis.

Nigerian officials brought criminal and civil charges in 2007, one set filed by state officials and the other $7 billion case brought by federal authorities.

The 2009 cable, classified as "confidential," says that Pfizer's country manager, Enrico Liggeri, met with U.S. officials in Abuja to discuss the cases.

"According to Liggeri," the cable says, "Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to federal attorney general Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases. He said Pfizer's investigators were passing this information to local media.

"A series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa's 'alleged' corruption ties were published in February and March. Liggeri contended that Pfizer had much more damaging information on Aondoakaa and that Aondoakaa's cronies were pressuring him to drop the suit for fear of further negative articles."

Aondoakaa told the Guardian, the British newspaper that first reported on the cable, that he knew nothing about Pfizer's attempts to investigate him.

The Nigerian state of Kano settled with Pfizer for $75 million in July 2009. Details of the federal settlement were never reported.

A Pfizer representative in a phone interview Friday declined to discuss specifics of the cable or Liggeri's alleged comments. In its written statement last week, Pfizer said it negotiated the confidential settlement with the federal government "in good faith and its conduct in reaching that agreement was proper." Pfizer said it had agreed to pay the legal fees and expenses incurred by the federal government in the litigation and no payment was made to the federal government of Nigeria itself.

According to the cable, Liggeri also told U.S. officials that the lawsuits were "wholly political in nature," and that the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders also gave children Trovan. Officials with the organization said that is not the case, and other records suggest that only Pfizer would have had access to Trovan at the time.

Radical jihadism is not a mental disorder

By Stephen N. Xenakis
The Washington Post
Sunday, December 5, 2010;

The case of Omar Khadr was the first war crimes prosecution of the Obama administration, and it could set a dangerous precedent for how mental health professionals are used in terrorism trials.

I attended the proceedings in October - the first American tribunal for a child soldier since World War II - because I had been working with Khadr's defense team for two years. I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a retired Army brigadier general; the defense had asked me to evaluate Khadr's physical and mental health, as well as advise on military procedure.

As I listened to the prosecution's expert testimony depicting Khadr's state of mind, I was reminded of psychiatry and the politicization of mental health under the Soviet regime. Those were the years when political dissidents were accused of insanity simply because they had the audacity to challenge the Soviet system. The medical profession, especially psychiatry, was a political instrument of control and repression.

Prosecutors from the military and the Justice Department built their case against Khadr largely on testimony from their expert witness, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, whom they called upon to offer a medical opinion on Khadr's mental condition. Welner, a physician in private practice in New York and a professor at New York University, is developing the Depravity Scale, a tool that is intended to help juries judge the heinous or evil nature of a crime.

Painting a broad picture of the defendant, prosecutors portrayed Khadr as an unrepentant and dangerous warrior who threw a grenade that killed a special forces medic during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. Khadr was 15 years old at the time. Army medics saved his life after he was shot in the back twice and the compound where he lived was bombed to rubble.

During the trial, according to my notes and observations, Welner depicted Khadr as a continuing risk to society. "In my professional opinion, Omar Khadr is at a high risk of dangerousness as a radical jihadist," Welner said. Based on hundreds of hours of reviewing records and interviewing witnesses, and 7 to 8 hours of examining the prisoner, the doctor said he concluded that Khadr was a radical jihadist who was at risk of inspiring others to violent acts in the future.

But radical jihadism is not a clinical condition, and diagnosing it is not within the domain of psychiatric experts. Radical jihadism is an ideology - and can be embraced by the psychiatrically sane and insane alike.

Beyond being simply unscientific, however, the testimony had another troubling aspect. Welner relied, in part, on the research of a particularly egregious source: Danish educational psychologist Nicolai Sennels.

Welner noted that there are few academic or medical sources on the "future dangerousness" of "radical jihadists who have been apprehended and detained." Sennels, he said, is an exception. Welner described the lengthy conversation the two men had held and said his perspective was informed in part by Sennels's research on Muslim youth whom he treated as a prison psychologist. But Welner wasn't familiar with all of Sennels's written work. As the defense explained during cross-examination, Sennels is also known for inflammatory views on Islam, having claimed that "massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1,400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool." Sennels has described the Koran as "a criminal book that forces people to do criminal things." Welner specifically repudiated these views in court.

In making its case against Khadr, the government relied on Welner's professional status as a forensic psychiatrist to put a scientific sheen on what were essentially lay opinions. The prosecutors depicted Khadr as a probably violent and radical charismatic leader. He had pleaded guilty to murder (albeit in a firefight when he was 15), was a devout Muslim and was well-liked by both detainees and guards, so he had to be dangerous. Through testimony disguised as expert psychiatric opinion, the prosecution portrayed Khadr as having "marinated" in jihadi thinking before and during his long internment at Guantanamo, and described him as a "rock star" who, as the son of a close lieutenant of Osama bin Laden's, enjoyed the adulation of other detainees.

How should Khadr be treated, then, according to the prosecution? He was a candidate for what they called "deradicalization," much like Saudi Arabia has carried out with other detainees who have returned from Guantanamo. Unfortunately, they noted, such programs are not available in the United States or Canada.

Khadr's attorneys, who were concerned that the trial could degenerate into a battle between experts, chose not to call the defense mental health experts who know him well. That means I didn't get to take the stand. If I had, I would have said - without violating the confidentiality of my work for more than two years with Khadr, and after spending more than 200 clinical hours with him - that he does not need "deradicalization" and does not show any proclivity toward committing terrorist acts. What he needs and deserves is physical and mental health treatment. He suffered extensive wounds, had multiple surgeries, is blind in his left eye and lives with the aftereffects of his injuries and interrogations.

The defense opted instead to allow Khadr to make the statement that he wanted to make, believing that his words would be more powerful than anything a mental health expert could say. Khadr apologized to the medic's widow and gave a moving repudiation of hate and violence.

In the end, considerations about Khadr's mental health might not have mattered to the jury as they determined his sentence: 40 years in prison, though, per a plea bargain, he will serve no more than eight additional years at Guantanamo or in a Canadian prison.

The military panel also heard testimony from the medic's widow. She read a letter from her 11-year-old daughter, only four years younger than Khadr was when he threw the grenade, condemning him as a murderer. Her voice may have had more of an impact on Khadr's fate than Welner's testimony.

But a doctor's words, and the pseudoscience of radicalism, could have a particularly insidious effect. In totalitarian regimes, the government often exploited psychiatrists to label citizens as "enemies of the state" without substantive clinical data. I don't believe that happened here. Radical jihadism is a serious threat, and we must use every resource available to combat it. But we should be cautious that if we misuse the science of mental health in the process, we are slipping closer to those totalitarian states. And that could be a greater threat to our national security than Omar Khadr ever was.

Stephen N. Xenakis is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a retired Army brigadier general.

Dubai Beats Israel in Math & Science

Korea and Finland top OECD’s latest PISA survey of education performance


07/12/2010 - Korea and Finland top the OECD’s latest PISA survey of reading literacy among 15-year olds, which for the first time tested students’ ability to manage digital information.



The survey, based on two-hour tests of a half million students in more than 70 economies, also tested mathematics and science. The results for 65 economies are being released today.

The next strongest performances were from Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.



The province of Shanghai, China, took part for the first time and scored higher in reading than any country. It also topped the table in maths and science. More than one-quarter of Shanghai’s 15-year-olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an OECD average of just 3%.




“Better educational outcomes are a strong predictor for future economic growth,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “While national income and educational achievement are still related, PISA shows that two countries with similar levels of prosperity can produce very different results. This shows that an image of a world divided neatly into rich and well-educated countries and poor and badly-educated countries is now out of date.”

	Reading		Math		Science
Qatar	372	10	368	10	379	10
Jordan	405	8	387	8	415	8
Tunisia	404	9	371	9	401	9
Turkey	464	6	445	7	454	7
Dubai (UAE)	459	7	453	5	466	5
Israel	474	5	447	6	455	6
UK	494	4	492	3	514	2
USA	500	1	487	4	502	3
Germany	497	2	513	1	520	1
France	496	3	497	2	498	4
OECD avg	493		496		501

The OECD studied differing results between girls and boys, as well as the influence of class size, teacher pay and the degree of autonomy schools have in allocating resources. Findings include:

*
Girls read better than boys in every country, by an average of 39 points, the equivalent to one year of schooling. The gender gap has not improved in any country since 2000, and widened in France, Israel, Korea, Portugal and Sweden. This is mirrored in a decline of boy’s enjoyment of reading and their engagement with reading in their leisure time.

*
The best school systems were the most equitable - students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. But schools that select students based on ability early show the greatest differences in performance by socio-economic background.

*
High performing school systems tend to prioritise teacher pay over smaller class sizes.

*
Countries where students repeat grades more often tend to have worse results overall, with the widest gaps between children from poor and better-off families. Making students repeat years is most common in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.

*
High performing systems allow schools to design curricula and establish assessment policies but don’t necessarily allow competition for students.

*
Schools with good discipline and better student-teacher relations achieve better reading results.

*
Public and private schools achieve similar results, after taking account of their home backgrounds.

*
Combining local autonomy and effective accountability seems to produce the best results.

*
The percentage of students who said they read for pleasure dropped from 69% in 2000 to 64% in 2009.

In new tapes, Nixon makes remarks against Irish, Italians, blacks, Jews

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2010; 10:37 AM

Richard M. Nixon made negative comments about Jews, blacks and other ethnic groups during informal discussions with top aides and his personal secretary that were recorded before he resigned as president, according to a newly released batch of tapes.

"I've just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits," Nixon said during a Feb. 13, 1973, conversation with Charles W. Colson that was included among 265 hours of tapes released on Thursday by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and first reported in the New York Times.

"The Jews have certain traits. The Irish have certain - for example, the Irish can't drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks. It's sort of a natural trait. Particularly the real Irish," Nixon said.

"The Italians, of course, just don't have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but . . ." he trailed off, adding later: "The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality."

During another conversation with his personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, Nixon expresses doubt about the opinion of William P. Rogers, his secretary of state, about blacks.

"Bill Rogers has got somewhat - and to his credit it's a decent feeling - but somewhat, sort of, a sort of blind spot on the black thing because he's been in New York," Nixon said. "He says, well, 'They are coming along, and that after all, they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.' So forth and so on.

"My own view is I think he's right if you're talking in terms of 500 years," Nixon said. "I think it's wrong if you're talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that's the only thing that's going to do it, Rose."

During another conversation with his secretary, Nixon argued that Jewish people tend to be insecure.

"Basically, Rose, most of our Jewish friends . . . they are all basically people who have a sense of inferiority and have got to compensate," Nixon said.

When Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was in Washington, Nixon gave instructions to Woods about who should be invited, or not invited, to what he called "the Jewish dinner."

"I don't want any Jew at that dinner who didn't support us in that campaign," he said. "Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us."

The tapes, made in February and March of 1973, were released along with 2,500 pages of formerly classified national security materials, 140,000 pages of domestic records, and 45 video oral histories done by the library between 2007 and 2009. They are the latest in a series of tapes released by the library that Nixon recorded during his presidency.

Transfer ban for Guantanamo detainees tucked into spending bill

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 12, 2010; 6:58 PM

The Senate is expected to consider a provision this week that would block the Obama administration from bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States for trial, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The House on Wednesday approved the nine-month ban on transfers of Guantanamo inmates, drawing fierce opposition from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The provision then went to the Senate as part of a broad spending bill that the chamber is likely to take up in some form this week.

Although it was unclear whether the Senate will go along, the legal fate of the accused planners of Sept. 11 remained more uncertain than ever nearly a decade after the attacks, according to administration and congressional officials.

Holder announced in the fall of 2009 that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has claimed responsibility for Sept. 11, and four other al-Qaeda detainees would go on trial in Manhattan federal court. But the plan soon ran into a bipartisan storm of opposition, which is tied to the administration's broader difficulties in closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - where Mohammed and the other detainees are held.

New York officials and lawmakers objected to civilian trials, saying they would be too expensive and dangerous. Administration officials said in March that New York was out and that the detainees, who had already been charged in a military commission at Guantanamo, would likely face a military trial.

Ever since, the cases have languished, with no decision on the venue. And the political prospects for civilian trials grew even dimmer last month when Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the United States for trial, was acquitted of 284 counts for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa. Jurors convicted the 36-year-old Tanzanian on one count of conspiracy, and he could face life in prison.

But the lack of a clear and unequivocal victory left administration officials believing they have no choice but to hold detainees such as Mohammed indefinitely while proceeding with a select number of military commissions. Administration officials say federal court trials are highly unlikely for the foreseeable future.

In that political context, the House passed the provision that would prohibit the use of any funds to transfer Mohammed - who was specified by name - and other Guantanamo detainees to the United States for trial. The three-paragraph measure was tucked into a more than $1 trillion spending bill designed to fund the federal government through Sept. 30, 2011.

The bill passed by a vote of 212-206 on the strength of 212 Democratic votes. Republicans, many of whom have long opposed civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees, voted against it for other reasons, congressional aides said.

In response, Holder wrote to Senate leaders on Thursday urging them to reject the Guantanamo provision, calling it "an extreme and risky encroachment on the authority of the Executive branch to determine when and where to prosecute terrorist suspects.''

In a news conference the same day, the attorney general was even more blunt.

"I also want to emphasize in the strongest possible terms that on a very personal level and as the person who knows these cases better than anybody, anybody, that this legislation is unwise,'' he said. "It takes away from the Justice Department, from our investigative agencies; it takes away from the American people the ability to hold accountable people who have committed mass murder, people who intended to harm, kill American citizens.''

Senate leaders declined to comment on Holder's letter or on whether the Guantanamo provision will remain in the spending measure that the body is expected to take up this week. Congressional officials said a spending bill must pass both houses in some form by Saturday, when the current resolution funding the government runs out.

At least one Democrat who is influential on detainee issues, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), indicated that he wanted the Guantanamo measure stricken from the final legislation.

"Rather than addressing the real question of how to close the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Congress continues to try to tie the hands of law enforcement and other security agencies,'' said Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman. "In the end, the result is a failure to bring these criminals to justice. I hope the final version of important legislation to keep the government running will not include this unprecedented, damaging, and ill-considered provision."