Run for President of Afghanistan? Zalmay, Zalmay Not.

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Seems everyone is riveted to news reports about the presidential campaign here. Everyone, that is, except some folks at the United Nations, where persistent chatter has it that Zalmay Khalilzad, our ambassador to the U.N., is also thinking of running for president . . . of Afghanistan.

The Afghan-born Khalilzad, a former Pentagon official, former ambassador to Afghanistan, then to Iraq and now to the U.N., is said to be in the mix for a run, which would probably be in the fall of 2009.

Honest. This is a real rumor. So real that we hear Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked Khalilzad about it when the two met in London back in October. But Khalilzad didn't give a Shermanesque response.

Another U.N. official asked him to say no more definitively, but Khalilzad declined, another official told our colleague Colum Lynch. On Dec. 12, a reporter asked Khalilzad about his "plans after your current job, if you have any."

"Well, I have no particular plan at this time," he replied, other than to leave at the end of the administration and "work in the United States in some job" in the private sector. "As to other plans," he said, "it is only plans in the United States after I finish this job." Which may have been his way of saying he isn't running.

But that apparently wasn't good enough. The rumors persist. Asked about this on Monday afternoon, Khalilzad said through spokesman Richard Grenell: "He is not a candidate for president of Afghanistan."

Of course he isn't. Not yet, anyway.

Last Call for High Honors

Don't forget! The deadline is midnight tonight for the In the Loop contest to guess what the intended target was in that still-suspicious fire last month in Vice President Cheney's office in the Old Executive Office Building.

Send your entries to hitthevault@washpost.com. Top 10 winners, in addition to bragging rights and a mention in the column, also get a coveted, official In the Loop T-shirt. Hill and administration folks can enter on background. You must include a daytime or cellphone number. Good luck.

Next Year: The Photos

It looked at first like a typical "Dear Friends and Family" blast holiday greeting. You know the ones -- desperately in need of editing -- that tell you all about Jenny's first year in school and Taylor's fourth-grade soccer exploits.

The one we got from Gloria Squitiro, wife of recently elected Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Mark Funkhouser started that way, talking about the election last May, her role as his campaign manager, how difficult it was being mayor and so on.

Then: "Believe it or not, but winning the election wasn't the best thing that happened to Funk" (as she calls him), Squitiro wrote on Dec. 21. "No, getting his first prostate exam . . . was the highlight of his year. And watching Funk get the exam was the biggest joy of mine."

She said she had noticed her husband wasn't "bouncing back like he used to" and got him scheduled for a physical, apparently his first after turning 50 a few years back. She said it wasn't clear that Funk knew what was going to happen, but she did.

"I waited in gleeful anticipation," she wrote, noting with satisfaction "the doctor's sausage-sized fingers."

During the exam, she "saw Funk's eyes bulge out of his head," but, "Sadly for me, my sadistic laughter was very short-lived," as the doctor said that "the mayor had the prostate of a 30-year-old."

Since then, she reported, he's been "strutting about the house like he's a young bull in the ring," and whenever he sees her "it's as if he's seeing the matador's red cape for the very first time. I tell you true, it isn't pretty over at the Funkhouser house right about now."

And it likely didn't get prettier when some non-friend leaked the missive to the Kansas City Star's political blog last week and the bizarre holiday letter became the talk of the town.

Not a Ride to Take Twice

There have been rumors for many weeks now that former secretary of state Madeleine Albright is positioning herself to take another tour in that post should Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) become president.

Then there was the publication of Albright's new book, with the title "Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership." Then she appeared center-stage, to Clinton's immediate right, after last week's Iowa caucuses. (Still trying to figure out how that happened, given the Clinton claim to be the embodiment of change. And what was Gen. Wesley Clark doing standing next to Albright?) Then there are those Starbucks coffee cups with sayings from various prominent people. No. 287 is Albright's famous observation: "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

So we called to ask: What's up with the rumors? And this is what she said, through a spokesperson: "I loved being secretary of state. It's a job you don't have twice. The only person who held it twice was Daniel Webster, and I am not Daniel Webster."

Where's Wolfowitz?

Keeping up with . . . former Pentagon No. 2 and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, who's now at the American Enterprise Institute. Last seen Friday in Seoul chatting with incoming president Lee Myung-bak of the conservative Grand National Party.

Wolfowitz was part of an informal Asia-hands delegation put together by former representative Steve Solarz, now senior counselor at consulting firm APCO Worldwide, and Cal Berkeley professor emeritus Robert Scalapino as the new Korean government takes shape. Others in the meeting included former defense secretary William Perry, now at Stanford, former nuke negotiator Robert Gallucci, now at Georgetown, former ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith and Alexander Vershbow, the ambassador to Korea.

Mondale's Fjord Ticket

Keeping up with . . . former vice president Walter F. Mondale. Mondale has been named Norway's honorary consul general in Minneapolis. Mondale, whose family came from Mundal, on the west coast of Norway, was asked to take the job by the country's foreign minister.

Sympathy for Lantos

California Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos's announcement last week that he has esophageal cancer and will not run for another term sparked a huge outpouring of condolences on the Hill and around the country.

Even those eyeing his job weighed in. California state Senator Jackie Speier issued a warm note, saying she was "saddened by the news." State Senator Leland Yee also said he was "deeply saddened by the news."

"In the coming days," he said, "we will take a hard look at the challenges [of] filling the shoes of Congressman Lantos, but today is not the day to be thinking about future political office."

Absolutely.