Sour Over Her Sweetheart Deal

Lest anyone think Riza is some shrinking violet, there's this from the deposition of Robin Cleveland, the former Office of Management and Budget official Wolfowitz brought over to be his chief of staff. Cleveland is widely known as one tough costumer in her own right.

"Did you yourself talk to Ms. Riza on the whole issue while this negotiation was going on?" Wijffels asked her.

"I'm confident that I was on the receiving end of a lot of yelling," Cleveland recalled. "Whether or not I would characterize that as a conversation, I can't say."

Leading by Staying Home

Remember that $2.3 million Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program, launched by the State Department last year to foster goodwill and to teach Iraqi kids how to get along and be good citizens?

The idea was to bring about 100 Iraqi high school students over this summer to "learn about the United States, to develop their leadership skills, and to develop friendships," the program announcement said.

Three international student-exchange organizations divvied up the program grants and started working on recruitment. But it seems there's going to be a bit of a delay, most likely to next summer, because of apparently unforeseen security problems and especially because of passport problems.

The Iraqis, moving to a new passport system, have shut down their passport office, according to Peter Simpson, program director for one of the grantees, World Learning.

Another problem is that all the kids would be required to go to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad -- not just once, but twice -- to get visas. The waits for visas also can be lengthy, and those trips could be quite dangerous if people who are not huge fans of the United States were to find out who was signing up.

There was some discussion of just bringing students over from Kurdistan or perhaps recruiting from among Iraqi refugees in Jordan, where they would have safe access to the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Washington nixed those alternatives.

If the students safely obtain passports, there's also a concern that recruiting students from all regions and ethnic groups in Iraq might lead to tension or fighting among them when they got to the States.

Well, let's hope the programs, which have experience dealing with ethnic tensions, keep the peace. Of course, there might be some trouble when they get back and people find out where they've been.

A State Department official acknowledged the delay but said: "It will happen. It's going forward. We're recruiting in country, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to work through the procedural issues."

The postponement might be "something of a blessing," Simpson said, in that it helps ensure time to recruit a diverse group of Iraqis.

As for safety concerns, the key, according to an e-mail circulating at one grantee, is to make sure everyone recruited is told right up front about the "the risk factors that we know about (including the fact that they may be photographed with President Bush and that their photos may be published.)."

Now there's a nifty idea.

Quid Pro Dough?

Headline of the week . . . from the Associated Press on a story from Tokyo: "Landlocked Laos to join whaling commission, likely to support Tokyo's campaign."

The Laotians, not known to eat much whale, are expected to be strong supporters of Japan's drive to lift the moratorium on commercial whaling. The announcement came after a meeting between top Japanese and Laotian officials during which the Japanese announced a $1 million aid program for removal of buried unexploded bombs in Laos.

A Laotian official said there was no connection joining the International Whaling Commission and the million bucks.

Of course not. Who would have thought that?