Afghan watchers were taken aback Tuesday night when Laura Bush , appearing on the "Tonight" show, chatted with Jay Leno about her recent trip to Kabul, where she found things "very encouraging."
She spoke with women at Kabul University and "I didn't see any women in burqas," she told Leno. "I mean, a lot of -- all women, of course, wore scarves, and some covered part of their face. But they [were not] really covered up with that -- with the burqa that's so difficult to be able to see out of."
Of course she didn't see women in burqas, Afghan experts said yesterday. "If you go the same way she did, you wouldn't see any either," said Abdul Raheem Yaseer , assistant director of the University of Nebraska Center for Afghanistan Studies. But if she went to "the old city or to the bazaar for a shopping tour, she would see hundreds of them."
In places where women work, said Barnett R. Rubin of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, they would have a lot of trouble wearing burqas. "There are no women wearing burqas at offices," he said. But in the other areas, in the villages especially, burqas are much more common, he added.
"Burqas have been worn in Afghanistan forever," Yaseer said. The fundamentalist Taliban and their religious police enforced universal wearing of the head-to-toe burqas, he said, and, while usage has declined substantially since the U.S. invasion three years ago, they are still very much in evidence.
1 Chance in 3 of Escaping OMB
Regulatory czar John D. Graham , the oft-controversial director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is reportedly doing some personal cost-benefit risk analyses these days.
Graham, founder and head of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis before he took over the powerful regulatory job at the Office of Management and Budget, is reportedly one of three finalists vying to become dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Enviros, consumer groups and liberal watchdogs have long sparred with Graham, saying his approach to regulatory analysis valued industry profits over safety. Graham responds that he is simply demanding that "sound science" guides regulations.
Graham is in the "end process" for the College Park job, a university official told Inside EPA. The other two candidates for the job are Alvaro Umana , the former Costa Rican minister of natural resources who is now at the U.N. Development Program, and former representative Martin Frost (D-Tex.).
So is Graham feeling good about his odds?
Would Two Others Be 'Top Secret'?
Quote of the week: Former CIA director George J. Tenet says he regrets telling President Bush in 2002 that he had "slam dunk" evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
"Those were the two dumbest words I ever said," Tenet told about 1,300 people at a Kutztown University forum Wednesday.
Lugar's Crystal Ball
Senate Republicans and the White House sound increasingly confident about Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton 's chances of being confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) predicts Bolton will get the job.
