Forecasts That Don't Equal Power

Philip Kennicott's profile of Prof. Rashid Khalidi ["The Knowledge That Doesn't Equal Power," Style, May 13] amply aired Mr. Khalidi's complaint that policymakers do not listen to the experts who know the Middle East best -- including Mr. Khalidi himself.

But in his book, "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America," Martin Kramer documents that Mr. Khalidi's predictions are consistently not borne out.

For example, before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Mr. Khalidi said that the United States would sustain heavy casualties in tough battles with Iraqi troops.

Undeterred by the rapid U.S. victory and the mass surrenders of Iraqi troops, Mr. Khalidi predicted that the Baath Party would "ditch" Saddam Hussein to save itself. Besides being false, this last prediction revealed an ignorance of Iraqi politics and the nature of Saddam Hussein's one-man autocracy.

AARON MANNES

Rockville