U.S. General Named to Oversee Training of Afghan Forces - washingtonpost.com

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By John Milburn
Associated Press
Saturday, October 10, 2009

TOPEKA, Kan., Oct. 9 -- President Obama has nominated the commander of Fort Leavenworth to lead U.S. and NATO efforts to train Afghan forces.

Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV would join the war's top U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, if confirmed by the Senate this fall. McChrystal is pushing for more help in developing Afghanistan's fledging military.

Caldwell has led the Kansas post since July 2007, and he guided development of the U.S. Army's plans for training foreign security forces. His new position would focus on training local army and police forces in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said Friday that Caldwell's nomination is a recognition by the Pentagon of the importance of the mission, elevating the command from a two-star to a three-star general. Nagl noted the deployment of a 82nd Airborne Division brigade to train Afghan forces, but he said more troops and resources will be needed.

"He's got the right skill sets to make a huge difference," Nagl, a former Army officer, said of Caldwell.

The nomination, announced late Thursday, comes as Obama reviews McChrystal's assessment of the war and the need to develop Afghanistan's military to fight a resurgent Taliban.

In his assessment, McChrystal said that Afghan forces aren't large enough to meet the demands of the war and that development is vital to the strategy for sustainable security and stability in the country. He said the progress by Afghan forces over the next 12 to 18 months is critical to preserve international support.

McChrystal advocates accelerating growth of the Afghan forces from 200,000 soldiers to 400,000. But efforts to train those units have been hindered by a lack of discipline, widespread corruption and illiteracy.

House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) called Caldwell "an excellent educator and trainer" while overseeing Fort Leavenworth and its Command and General Staff College, where the Army's majors receive advanced training.

"He did a great job in command of Fort Leavenworth and will do great things in his new post," Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said Friday. "I am confident the president's new command team can develop and implement an effective strategy to regain momentum in Afghanistan."

This is the second time in three years that a president has picked Fort Leavenworth's commander for key war commands. Gen. David H. Petraeus was promoted in 2007, and he is now commander of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Caldwell and McChrystal were classmates at West Point and graduated in 1976.

North Dakota Scandal Raises Concerns About Health Co-op Route - washingtonpost.com

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By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 10, 2009

BISMARCK, N.D. -- For the North Dakota insurance sales reps, March may have been the ideal time to enjoy the swim-up bar at a resort on Grand Cayman Island. But back on the northern Plains, where temperatures were below zero, policyholders at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota were less delighted when they learned about the trip for 66 staff members and guests.

Word of the $238,000 Caribbean retreat broke last winter, compounded by news of other perks: $15 million in executive bonuses over five years, $400,000 for charter flights and $35,000 for a vice president's retirement party. And when the ensuing uproar cost Michael Unhjem his job as chief executive, his landing was softened by a $2.5 million severance payment. The golden parachute had been added to his contract after his 2006 drunken-driving arrest, a state audit pointed out.

In an era in which stories of corporate excess have become common, the drama of North Dakota's dominant insurer resonated deeply here, largely because the state's nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield is essentially a cooperative, owned by policyholders. It is an arrangement close to the model promoted by powerful lawmakers as an alternative to the "public option" that would put the federal government in the insurance business. The legislation that the Senate Finance Committee will probably approve Tuesday calls for the creation of health insurance cooperatives in all 50 states and the District.

A liberal group here argues that the North Dakota scandal illustrates the danger of assuming that the cooperative model would assure virtuous behavior, especially in an industry awash in money.

"Call it cooperative, call it mutual, call it private insurance," said Don Morrison, executive director of NDpeople.org. "If what we want is to have quality health care at a price people can afford, it's not coming from the culture of private insurance. If this is a model, let's get real."

As an existing company, the Blues would not be allowed into the ranks of new co-ops envisioned by Sen. Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who is also the Finance Committee's most zealous promoter of the model. Conrad, who grew up in Bismarck, declined to comment on the controversy surrounding the Blues. But he cites the success of the electrical, farm and even commercial cooperatives that rose out of the same tradition of prairie populism that produced the original Blue Cross seven decades ago.

"The co-op plan aims to achieve the same benefits for consumers as a public option without government control of health insurance," Conrad said in a statement this month. "It does so by creating private, consumer-driven, nonprofit health plans. Because these plans will be owned by their members, they will focus on getting the best value for consumers, rather than maximizing revenues or profits."

Not much is known about health- care cooperatives on a large scale because there are only a few in the country. Timothy S. Jost, who studies health-care policy at Washington and Lee University, said they tend to provide good service to members but have not made "any tremendous difference in terms of cost or price."

For the Blues, which have common roots in the cooperative model, controversies over executive compensation have not been limited to North Dakota. Maryland's insurance commissioner halved an $18 million severance payout last year for the chief executive of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, calling it "simply too much money to pay the departing CEO of a nonprofit company."

In Massachusetts, where residents are required to carry health insurance, the attorney general last month launched an inquiry into executive and board compensation at health-care nonprofits after the chairman of the state's Blue Cross Blue Shield retired with a $16 million lump sum.

"Our office is concerned about the generally high cost of health care. This is a part of that," said David Friedman, first assistant attorney general in the office headed by Martha Coakley, a Democrat running for the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.

In North Dakota, which has a $1 billion state budget surplus, residents wear their parsimony proudly. And all of the spending excesses, said state Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm, came roughly at the time the company was seeking premium increases of 15 to 20 percent.

"They're owned by the policyholders," said Hamm, whose powers would have been curtailed under legislation the company was pushing when the scandal erupted. "Every dime they're spending is the policyholders' dime."

Paul von Ebers, who took over as the Blues' CEO in the scandal's aftermath, said the current scrutiny is both inevitable and frustrating, given the company's overall record. It spends just 7 percent of premiums on overhead. Last year, only eight official complaints were filed against the company, up from six the year before.

"Nationwide, the attacks on insurance companies are a concerted attempt to distract discussion from the real issues of what's going on in health care," von Ebers said from the company's Fargo headquarters. "In Washington, we're focusing on insurance companies as evil entities, while anyone who understands health care realizes that utilization rates and technology are the major cost drivers."

Critics, however, find a timely lesson in the transformation of the North Dakota insurer from its populist origins.

Conceived in the late 1930s by a bishop as a "benevolent and charitable corporation," the Blue Cross co-op rose from the same egalitarian impulse that produced a state-owned bank and grain elevator. In the late 1980s, it merged with another nonprofit, Blue Shield, and grew into a major player in the political establishment.

"They have more clout than anyone in the state," said state Sen. Tim Mathern of Fargo, the 2008 Democratic candidate for governor.

Along the way, board members' salaries rose along with executive pay; they quadrupled in two years to $12,000 annually, plus $1,200 per meeting.

"It's a self-perpetuating board," said Morrison of NDpeople.org, noting that a 1998 effort by consumer advocates to nominate two directors was rebuffed in favor of candidates selected by incumbents. "The people on the board who supposedly had the people's interests were the power elite of North Dakota."

The board's coziness with executives was clearest in the severance package for von Ebers's predecessor, Unhjem, who acknowledged at the time that he should have realized the public relations problem the Cayman Islands trip would cause. State auditors were also puzzled that the board paid severance to two other executives whose contracts required none. Bonuses for "performance" were paid even when underwriting showed a loss.

Board Chairman Dennis Elbert did not return calls seeking comment.

"The premiums keep going up and up. It makes me angry that the top CEOs and so on would reward themselves. And for what? For what?" said Pat Swanson, 68, who during her time in an insurance broker's office sold policies for "the Blues," as the nonprofit is known. She now works at a Hallmark store at Kirkwood Mall.

Though the Blues' premiums are among the lowest in the country, they have risen 87 percent since 2001 for group policies, far faster than income has. "When they pay, they pay out of their minds. That's why their policies are so spendy," said Lisa Marchus, 47.

Marchus works on the frontier of the service economy, taking orders in her Bismarck home from McDonald's drive-throughs in distant states, then typing them onto a screen that appears before fry cooks inside the restaurants. The pay is $7 an hour without benefits, and she said when she saw a surgeon about a knee replacement, he "made me out to be an idiot" because she relied on Medicaid.

Hamm, a Republican elected in November, thinks the Blues' virtual monopoly stands at the core of the scandal. But in the quest for competition on the national level, he worries that a public option might use federal subsidies to undercut private competitors unfairly. Still, he was loath to recommend co-ops, either.

"One of the main things you see in health-care cooperatives in this country is the board hasn't always acted in the best interests of the membership and cut down on waste," Hamm said. "It hasn't been able to achieve in the health-care economy what it's been able to achieve in agriculture and other areas."

Swine Flu Deaths Among Youths Rise as Epidemic Spreads - washingtonpost.com

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amer19 Fatalities Reported in Past Week, Including 2 in Maryland, as Vaccine Distribution Gets Underway

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 10, 2009

The number of children who have died from swine flu has jumped sharply as the virus continues to spread widely around the United States, striking youngsters, teenagers, young adults and pregnant women unusually often, federal officials said Friday.

The deaths of another 19 children and teenagers from the new H1N1 virus were reported in the past week around the country, including two in Maryland, pushing to 76 the number of fatalities this year among those under 18, officials said. It was the largest number of pediatric deaths reported in a single week since the pandemic began in the spring.

"These pediatric deaths seem to be increasing substantially," said Anne Schuchat, who heads the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

While most of the children who have died have had other health problems that made them particularly vulnerable, such as asthma, muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy, 20 to 30 percent were otherwise healthy, Schuchat said.

Between 46 and 88 children died from the seasonal flu in each of the past four years, so the fact that so many have already succumbed is disturbing, Schuchat said.

"It's only the beginning of October," she said, noting that the flu season usually starts much later and runs through May. "We saw a peak of deaths, you know, starting April, May, June. It started to level off this summer. Now it's starting to shoot up again."

In addition to the two deaths in Maryland, three were reported in Tennessee, seven in Texas and one each in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

Since the pandemic began, at least 3,873 Americans have died from complications associated with the flu, primarily the H1N1 virus, including at least 28 pregnant women.

The increase in pediatric deaths comes as the federal government's unprecedented vaccination campaign is just getting underway. Millions of doses of vaccine began arriving around the country this week.

It provided more reason why parents should get themselves and their children vaccinated against the virus, Schuchat said.

"Vaccine against flu is the best way to protect yourself . . . and those around you," she said.

The federal government has spent about $2 billion to buy at least 250 million doses of vaccine in the hopes of inoculating more than half the U.S. population, and it has pledged to buy enough to vaccinate everyone if there is sufficient demand.

So far, states and cities have ordered 3.7 million doses of the 6.8 million that have become available, and the first doses were administered this week. Some doctors and clinics are reporting being flooded with requests for the vaccine. But several national surveys have found that only about 40 percent of Americans are sure they will get it, with those who are reluctant citing doubts about the severity of the virus and concerns about side effects.

The vaccine campaign is also fueling anti-government sentiments and false rumors that the vaccine is mandatory. Although New York state and some individual hospitals and private health chains are requiring their employees to get vaccinated this year for the first time, the vaccine remains voluntary for most people.

"Lots of rumors out there, and we're trying to address them," Schuchat said.

Additional data from federal studies testing the vaccine have found no evidence of any unusual risks and have confirmed preliminary indications that the vaccine is effective for most adults with one standard dose.

At least 37 states are reporting widespread flu activity, up from 27 a week ago. While the number of cases appears to be decreasing in some places, it is increasing in others and could rise again in areas where cases are dropping, Schuchat said. New York and some other cities that experienced large outbreaks in the spring are reporting fewer cases than expected, but Schuchat warned that could change at any time.

"It's hard to know how many waves we're going to have into the fall, winter and spring," she said. "We still think the vast majority of people in a given community are vulnerable or susceptible to this virus."

Although the virus causes mild illness for most people, some people become seriously ill, requiring intensive care to try to save them.

"Unfortunately, we do expect more illness, including more hospitalizations and deaths, to be occurring in the weeks ahead," she said.

Schuchat also encouraged people to get the seasonal flu vaccine. Some areas are experiencing shortages of seasonal flu vaccine, in part because manufacturers are juggling production of both vaccines. New data from another federal study aimed at determining whether people can get both vaccines at the same time found that was no problem.

Afghan Men Tricked Into U.S. Trip, Detained - washingtonpost.com

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Possible Witnesses Have Been Forced To Stay Since 2008

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 10, 2009

For Ziaulhaq, an Afghan driver who had never ventured outside the borders of his war-torn country, the prospect of a trip to the United States seemed like the adventure of a lifetime. He pleaded with his bosses at a contracting company near the U.S. air base at Bagram to include him on the whirlwind trip to Columbus, Ohio.

But the all-expenses-paid travel -- billed as a conference to honor Afghan businesses -- turned out to be an elaborate ruse to draw Ziaulhaq and two co-workers to the United States. Prosecutors wanted them here as witnesses in a bribery case against U.S. servicemen and some Afghan contractors.

And what began as a celebration in the summer of 2008 has become an agonizing extended stay for Ziaulhaq, who is not accused of any crime but has been forced to stay thousands of miles away from his sick wife and six children at home. Ziaulhaq and two countrymen have spent more than a year confined to a hotel in a drab industrial area near Chicago's sooty Midway Airport.

Their saga highlights anew the power of a controversial U.S. statute that allows prosecutors to hold people, without suspicion or criminal charges, as material witnesses in ongoing investigations. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, the Bush Justice Department used the law to round up Muslim men, giving rise to a lawsuit against then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft that experts say could make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And at least one key Senate Democrat has tried, to no avail, to introduce more safeguards into the material witness process.

Authorities say they want Ziaulhaq's testimony in their prosecution of a bribery scheme at Bagram, an Air Force base 27 miles north of Kabul, in which servicemen accepted kickbacks from Afghan contractors. The servicemen, according to prosecutors, packed the cash in boxes that they sent home by way of the U.S. Postal Service.

But the little-noticed case has been beset by delays and confusion. It has drawn increasingly sharp complaints from lawyers and an Afghan diplomat who say that Ziaulhaq, 39, is a casualty in the U.S. government's efforts to crack down on corruption and military contracting fraud in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Justice Department officials declined to comment on the bribery case, but they noted that the lengthy detention was approved by a federal judge.

Ziaulhaq, a slender former veterinary student with a scraggly black beard, came to work as an office aide and a part-time driver for the contracting company because of family ties. He says he had no contact with the military and knows nothing about the case.

"I made him available to both sides and he doesn't know anything," said Michael J. Falconer, a court-appointed attorney for Ziaulhaq, who uses just one name. "Unless there's some surprise waiting in the wings, he won't be a material witness because he's got nothing to say that's material. . . . This poor guy just got swept up in the mess."

Ziaulhaq and his confederates -- Bashir Ahmad, 30, and Kiomars Mohammad Rafi, 27 -- had been employees of companies that provided concrete security barricades and other materials to the U.S. military at Bagram. Now they spend their days attending prayer services and cooking in their small kitchenette of their hotel, where monthly rates range from $2,000 to $3,000. The hotel sits next to a $3 carwash and across the street from an industrial strip occupied by discount-store distribution centers.

They rarely venture out and are subjected to nightly curfews and calls from probation officers. Prosecutors secured court permission to detain the men as flight risks, arguing that they might never return for trials if they were allowed to go home. A few months ago, however, the Afghans were released from electronic monitoring.

At the same time, some of the men who have been indicted in the case have successfully petitioned a judge for permission to travel to the gym, study English and attend a funeral and a family reunion in Wisconsin, court records reflect.

"It's just terrible," Falconer said. "They do not have any identification, so they can't do anything. They can't even go to a health club or cash the checks they get for witnesses' fees."

Nearly a year ago, court-appointed lawyers exhorted a federal judge to schedule depositions, giving the Justice Department and defense attorneys a chance to question the three witnesses so they could return to their families. But the judge deferred a ruling. Another bid in June to hold an "emergency" deposition for Ziaulhaq passed without action.

A letter to the Justice Department by Afghan Ambassador Said T. Jawad expressing his concern about "the lengthy and unwarranted detention of three Afghan nationals" received a reply but did not accelerate the pace.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are blaming each other for the delays.

"Since the return of the indictment, the United States has sought to expeditiously move this case toward resolution," Justice Department antitrust division chief Christine A. Varney wrote to the ambassador in August.

The Justice Department does not control the trial date in the complicated case, a spokeswoman added. But court-appointed attorneys for the witnesses and lawyers for the Afghan contracting companies are questioning why prosecutors lured the Afghan men into the country, only to wait nine months before expanding the criminal charges in the case and adding new defendants, all of which meant further delays.

The Afghans are hoping that a court proceeding later this month could finally pave the way for their return to their homeland.

"He is not a criminal," said Zuriden, Ziaulhaq's brother, in a telephone interview from Afghanistan, conducted in English. "More than one years he is in America. I don't know what is his problem. There is not anyone to help him."

Adding to the mystery of Ziaulhaq's long confinement is a recent statement in a court filing by prosecutors that they would need to interview him for only an hour, raising questions about how critical his testimony is to the case. The other two men detained as material witnesses may have more relevant information because they had more contact with people at Bagram, according to lawyers involved in the matter.

The path to Chicago was a serpentine one for Ziaulhaq, Ahmad and Rafi. They arrived at O'Hare International Airport on Aug. 25, 2008, after 36 hours of flights that took them from Kabul to Delhi and Tokyo before they landed in Chicago. The men -- accompanied by some of their supervisors who have been charged with bribery and other crimes -- thought they were en route to Ohio, where they would be feted in an event marking the seventh anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom at a dinner aimed at "honoring the past and building the future."

"We have been very busy here gearing up for what promises to be a great conference and chance to honor those of you who have helped us make such great strides in building the future of Afghanistan," wrote a man identifying himself as a "special programs coordinator" for the Defense Department in a 2008 e-mail to the Afghan contracting company.

Just days earlier, prosecutors had secured grand jury indictments against several military men, Afghan business owners and their companies for allegedly paying and accepting bribes to grease the skids for contracts at Bagram.

Court documents said the material witnesses had each worked for the contractors who had been charged and had "gained information, engaged in conversations and/or performed acts that constitute . . . evidence against one or more" of the defendants.

Three of the U.S. servicemen pleaded guilty to bribery last summer. Air Force Master Sgt. Patrick W. Boyd, who doled out contracts for concrete bunkers and asphalt paving, admitted to accepting $130,000 in bribes, prosecutors said in court papers. The government pegged its losses in the case of former National Guard Maj. Christopher P. West at $400,000 to $1 million. A friend of West's pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property -- at least $100,000 that West mailed from Afghanistan in 14 boxes.

The case against the foreign companies and the four Afghan men who owned them continues.

Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to disclose exactly how much authorities had paid to keep the three witnesses in hotels, although prosecutors last month called it an "extraordinary effort and expense." The men earn $88 per day to cover witness fees and incidental expenses, according to one source. But an attorney for Ziaulhaq said that cashing the government checks is "cumbersome" because his client does not have an identification card to show the bank teller.

Talamona noted the Justice Department's efforts in an ongoing multiagency task force to crack down on international contract corruption. The department's antitrust division brought 11 cases last year alleging criminal fraud schemes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"How long a material witness will be held is determined by the court," she said, adding that, when it is possible, the department will ask a judge to expedite a witness's release using a deposition to gather the testimony.

Chuck Aron, an attorney for Ahmad, said he does not discuss pending cases. Matthew Madden, an attorney for Rafi, declined to comment.

"These people have no constituency," said Kirby Behre, a District-based lawyer at the Paul Hastings firm who is representing Assad John Ramin, an owner of one of the companies named in charges. Ramin denies the criminal charges against him.

"This is clearly abusive, but perhaps because these are Afghan nationals and not Americans, nobody seems too concerned about the treatment these men are receiving," Behre said.

Staff writer Kari Lyderson in Chicago contributed to this report.

President Obama wins the Nobel Prize for Peace — but that's not his fault. - washingtonpost.com

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President Obama has won the Nobel Prize for Peace -- but that's not his fault.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

IT'S AN ODD Nobel Peace Prize that almost makes you embarrassed for the honoree. In blessing President Obama, the Nobel Committee intended to boost what it called his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." A more suitable time for the prize would have been after those efforts had borne some fruit.

It is no criticism of Mr. Obama to note that, barely nine months into his presidency, his goals are still goals. His peace prize came in the same week that Washington was consumed by a divisive debate over how to win a war in Afghanistan; the Obama administration announced a probable delay in its plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and Israel's foreign minister told the world that the Middle East peace Mr. Obama has been promoting is not coming soon. The Nobel Committee's claim that Mr. Obama has "created a new climate in international politics" is about as realistic as last week's "Saturday Night Live" parody skewering the president for failing to deliver, already, on a series of campaign promises.

We understand how much Scandinavians and other Europeans welcomed the end of the Bush administration; in that sense, Mr. Obama's prize confirms that his ascension to the presidency has improved America's image in the world, or at least parts of it. But in offering this latest Euro-celebration of the 2008 election, the Norwegian committee has also demonstrated a certain cluelessness about America. If anything animates Mr. Obama's critics in this country, it is the impression that he is the focus of a global cult of personality. This prize, at this time, only feeds that impression, and thus does him no favors politically.

The Nobel Committee's decision is especially puzzling given that a better alternative was readily apparent. This year, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in Iran braved ferocious official violence to demand their right to vote and to speak freely. Dozens were killed, thousands imprisoned. One of those killed was a young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan; her shooting by thugs working for the Islamist theocracy, captured on video, moved the world. A posthumous award for Neda, as the avatar of a democratic movement in Iran, would have recognized the sacrifices that movement has made and encouraged its struggle in a dark hour. Democracy in Iran would not only set a people free, it would also dramatically improve the chances for world peace, since the regime that murdered her is pursuing nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community.

Announcing Friday that he would accept the award, Mr. Obama graciously offered to share it with "the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets." But the mere fact that he avoided mentioning either Neda's name or her country, presumably out of consideration for the Iranian regime with which he is attempting to negotiate, showed the tension that sometimes exists between "diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" on the one hand, and advocacy of human rights on the other. The Nobel Committee could have spared Mr. Obama this dilemma if it had given Neda the award instead of him.

Israeli Foreign Minister Pours Cold Water on Palestinian Peace Prospects - WSJ.com

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By JOSHUA MITNICK

TEL AVIV -- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said not to expect a comprehensive peace pact with the Palestinians anytime soon, comments that coincided with a visit by U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, who is pushing for just such a deal.

Mr. Mitchell started a new round of shuttle diplomacy in the region Thursday, aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a permanent peace treaty, a goal that has remained elusive despite months of active U.S. mediation.

Mr. Lieberman is the leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, the largest partner in the government coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That secured for him the foreign ministry post, but he isn't directly involved in talks with the U.S. to renew peace efforts with the Palestinians.

"Why have [previous Israeli administrations] never achieved a comprehensive agreement? Because apparently it is impossible to achieve," the foreign minister said in an interview with Israel Radio.

A representative for Mr. Netanyahu declined to comment on Mr. Lieberman's remarks.

A Palestinian representative said the foreign minister's comments mean that prospects for peace are "very limited."

"What he said is more consistent with what Israel does, rather than what other [officials] are saying," said Ghassan Khatib, the head of the Palestinian Government Media Center. Mr. Netanyahu has said he is ready to enter negotiations without preconditions.

The comments also coincided with reports of a leaked foreign ministry position paper, commissioned by Mr. Lieberman, that recommends refocusing Israeli efforts away from the Palestinian conflict and reducing the Jewish state's dependence on the U.S.

Yigal Palmor, a ministry spokesman, said Mr. Lieberman commissioned the position paper ahead of a ministrywide re-examination of "the conventional wisdom of Israel's foreign policy."

The position paper, however, "doesn't represent anything except a basis for internal debate," he said. Mr. Palmor declined to discuss the substance of the position paper.

Mr. Lieberman, who has a reputation for blunt diplomacy, argued during the interview that like the ethnically divided island of Cyprus, Israelis and Arabs could learn to live alongside one another without a comprehensive solution to their conflict.

That runs counter to U.S. policy. During a three-way summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month, U.S. President Barack Obama called on the two sides to act with urgency and said a resolution to the decades-long conflict is "absolutely critical" for U.S. interests, as well as the peoples of the region.

Speaking to reporters at a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres Thursday, Mr. Mitchell said the Obama administration remains "firmly committed" to achieving a regional peace between Israel, the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors that includes a full normalization of ties.

WSJ.com Economic Forecasting Survey Shows Road to Recovery - WSJ.com

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By PHIL IZZO

The worst recession since the Great Depression has left a scorched landscape that will weigh on the labor market and the broader economy for years to come, according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.

The 48 surveyed economists expect the economy to bounce back from four quarters of contraction with 3.1% growth in gross domestic product at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in the just-ended third quarter.

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Expansion is seen continuing through the first half of 2010, though at a slower rate. But the massive downturn means the labor market will take years to heal. On average, the economists don't expect unemployment to fall below 6% until 2013; unemployment hit 9.8% in September.

"Never before has business shed so many workers so fast, so many people failed to find work who are looking for work, and so many dropped out of the labor force as in the current circumstance," said Allen Sinai at Decision Economics.

The labor market's tough road was underscored by Thursday's report on weekly applications for unemployment insurance. The Labor Department reported that initial claims fell 33,000 to 521,000 in the week ended Oct. 3. The number of people collecting unemployment insurance also fell, but remained above six million.

About the Survey

The Wall Street Journal surveys a group of 52 economists throughout the year. Broad surveys on more than 10 major economic indicators are conducted every month. Once a year, economists are ranked on how well their forecasts have fared. For prior installments of the surveys, see: WSJ.com/Economist .

The decrease in continuing claims likely reflects people exhausting their unemployment benefits after several months of looking for work in vain.

"We expect the improvement to remain a very slow one, and therefore for the household sector to be contending with a weak labor market for quite some time," Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist with research firm MFR Inc., wrote in a note to clients.

On average the economists -- not all of whom answered every question -- expect the unemployment rate to peak at 10.2% in February. But even once the employment situation stops getting worse, economists expect recovery to come slowly. "It could take until 2014-15 before we see a 5% handle on unemployment again," said Diane Swonk at Mesirow Financial. Persistently high unemployment could prove a political hot potato not only for the 2010 midterm elections for Congress but also for the 2012 presidential election.

Bloomberg News

A job seeker fills out an application last week in Raleigh, N.C. Economists expect the unemployment rate to keep rising.

Senate Democrats on Thursday said they reached a deal to extend unemployment-insurance benefits to the nearly 2 million jobless workers in danger of running out of assistance by year's end. The agreement would give an additional 14 weeks of benefits to jobless workers in all 50 states. Workers in states with an unemployment rate at 8.5% or above would receive six weeks on top of that.

Democrats said they could try to bring the measure to a quick vote on the Senate floor Thursday evening, depending on whether Republicans demand more extended debate.

While nine of the 46 economists who answered a question on the subject supported tax cuts for employers and seven backed tax incentives for hiring, nearly a third said the government shouldn't do anything. Just four said the government should boost spending.

"It's time to let the business cycle take over," said Stephen Stanley of RBS.

The existing $787 billion stimulus has raised concerns about the deficit, with almost three-quarters of respondents saying taxes will have to be raised on those making less than $250,000 at some point in the next six years.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has to decide when and how to pull back from its interventions in the market and when to raise interest rates from their current level of 0% to 0.25%. The economists don't expect the central bank to raise rates at all until sometime around August 2010 amid continued high unemployment.

Some economists worry the economy will turn down again over the next 12 months, leading to a so-called double-dip recession.

—Conor Dougherty contributed to this article.

Write to Phil Izzo at philip.izzo@wsj.com

Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 - WSJ.com

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Commander Prefers 40,000 for Afghanistan, but His Report Gives Obama 3 Options

By PETER SPIEGEL and YOCHI DREAZEN

WASHINGTON -- The request for troops sent to President Barack Obama by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan includes three different options, with the largest alternative including a request for more than 60,000 troops, according to a U.S. official familiar with the document.

Although the top option is more than the 40,000 soldiers previously understood to be the top troop total sought by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. officer in Kabul, 40,000 remains the primary choice of senior military brass, including Gen. McChrystal, the official said.

The details of the three scenarios were first reported by ABC News and confirmed by the U.S. official. The third option presented to Mr. Obama would be only a small increase that would keep U.S. forces largely at their year-end levels of 68,000 troops.

The troop request is expected to be deliberated today at Mr. Obama's fifth cabinet-level meeting of his war council amid indications of growing official unease about such a significant escalation.

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Although most requests for forces include only a single troop figure, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that Gen. McChrystal's request was unusual given the continuing review of Afghan strategy. It is rather common in military planning, however, to discuss three different scenarios in order to illustrate why the middle option is preferable option.

Gen. McChrystal has warned that the U.S. faces possible "mission failure" in Afghanistan unless it quickly sends large numbers of forces there. But the Obama administration faces growing hurdles even if it decides to go with a buildup of tens of thousands of troops.

Senior Army officers acknowledged in interviews, for instance, that the U.S. doesn't have nearly enough helicopters in Afghanistan to meet the current demand for safe movement of troops around the country. And U.S. forces are just beginning to receive new vehicles meant to function better on Afghanistan's poor roads.

Separately, a recent study by the Institute for the Study of War -- a Washington, D.C., think tank headed by Kimberly Kagan, a military analyst who worked on Gen. McChrystal's assessment team -- suggested it would be difficult to move enough troops from other posts to deploy anywhere close to 40,000 troops before next summer at the earliest.

The military agrees with the institute's overall findings, although has identified different units it could deploy over the course of the next year.

White House officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama's review is centering on ensuring the war is focused on preventing al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan -- a narrower objective that could require fewer, if any, new American troops. The officials acknowledged that the administration's strategic review no longer sees the U.S.'s primary mission in Afghanistan as completely defeating the Taliban or preventing the armed Islamist group from any involvement in the country's future.

Despite the narrowed focus, several White House officials said the administration's broad review is ongoing and that the president hasn't made any decisions. They said Mr. Obama wants to decide on what military strategy to pursue before approving or rejecting Gen. McChrystal's request.

Still, focusing the U.S. mission in Afghanistan solely on destroying al Qaeda could make it easier for Mr. Obama to make a public case for giving Gen. McChrystal the lowest end of his three options, which would amount to only a small increase.

Political support for the war has been rapidly eroding among the public and on Capitol Hill, even as Gen. McChrystal and the nation's top military personnel argue for a counterinsurgency strategy designed to protect Afghan civilians.

At the center of the ongoing deliberations, according to officials involved in and briefed on the White House sessions, is an emerging belief that a broad effort to defeat the Taliban and shore up Afghanistan's weak central government may not be necessary to counter the threat posed by al Qaeda.

White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Thursday that al Qaeda has focused on hitting the U.S., while danger posed by the Taliban "was somewhat different" and less threatening.

The argument that a return of some Taliban elements would not directly threaten U.S. security has been pushed by allies of Vice President Joe Biden, who has argued against a major increase in force levels. The distinction Mr. Biden draws is shared by Barnett Rubin, a top aide to the administration's special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, arguably the central player in the deliberations, is one of the officials who appears to most strongly disagree with that assessment. Earlier this week, the defense chief said that a Taliban takeover of wide swaths of Afghanistan would allow al Qaeda to "strengthen itself" by creating new havens for the terrorist group.

But participants in the current review said that neither Mr. Gates, who picked Gen. McChrystal for his job, nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have yet made clear what strategy they favor in Afghanistan or what forces should be sent there.

The Institute for the Study of War report detailed how the White House must grapple with the fact that the stretched U.S. military has only limited troops ready for deployment, which could mean that many forces might not reach the war zone until the summer of 2010.

The study concluded that the U.S. has only three Army and Marine brigades -- about 11,000 to 15,000 troops -- capable of deploying to Afghanistan this year. An additional four brigades, or potentially as many 20,000 troops, could deploy by the summer of 2010, the think tank concluded.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, said that the Army wanted to only send units to Afghanistan that have had at least 12 months back in the U.S. between overseas deployments.

But Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Mr. Obama could force the military's hand if he decides winning the war requires a quick infusion of large numbers of reinforcements. "In the real world you do what you need to do," he said. "You don't tailor the war to maintain peacetime readiness. You maintain peacetime assets precisely so you can consume them in war."

Lack of helicopters and other equipment problems could present a more intractable problem for a bigger force trying to reach Afghanistan's key battle zones. The country is mountainous and lacks reliable roads, so most troops and supplies are ferried to their bases aboard helicopters rather than on trucks or other ground vehicles.

Last summer, the Army deployed a second combat aviation brigade to Afghanistan, doubling the number of Army helicopters there from 114 to about 228. But with U.S. troop levels almost doubling in 2009, senior Army officers acknowledge that the U.S. still doesn't have nearly enough. "Simply put, we just don't have enough birds," one officer said in an interview this week. "The Taliban have made more and more of the roads inaccessible to us, so the need for helicopters keeps growing."

The military has also found that the signature vehicle of the Iraq war -- the giant armored trucks known as the "mine resistant, ambush protected" vehicles, or MRAPs -- don't function well on Afghanistan's poor roads. The Pentagon is in the process of purchasing hundreds of second-generation armored vehicles that are specially designed to function off-road or on dirt or gravel paths, but the first of the new vehicles only began arriving in Afghanistan in recent days.

—Jonathan Weisman contributed to this article.

Committee Decision Courts Controversy - WSJ.com

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By GUY CHAZAN and ALISTAIR MACDONALD

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, so early in his presidency, is bound to reignite criticism of the workings of the Nobel committee.

The deadline for nominations for the prize was Feb. 1 -- two weeks after Mr. Obama was inaugurated.

"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far," former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, said Friday. "He is still at an early stage."

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The award reflects the enormous hopes invested in Mr. Obama, both in the U.S. and abroad, since he entered the White House, and the occasionally unrealistic expectations that his presidency could change the face of international diplomacy.

The Peace Prize Committee, made up of Norwegians, appeared to have anticipated criticism of its choice. (The other Nobel prizes are awarded by a Swedish committee.) Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said the prize often has been used to encourage laureates rather than reward them for their achievements.

"The committee wants to not only endorse but contribute to enhancing that kind of international policy and attitude which [Obama] stands for," said Mr. Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister, said at a news conference.

He cited the example of Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor who won the prize in 1971. That award, he said, encouraged Mr. Brandt to pursue Ostpolitik, the push to normalize West Germany's relations with the communist bloc. Mr. Brandt was elected chancellor in 1969 and served until 1974.

Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, said he wasn't expecting the Obama award but said the president "has done some things already and he has the wonderful possibility of doing more things."

Mr. Obama's main achievement so far was the change the policy of his predecessor who had "put the world on a war footing [and] created suspicion and division," Mr. Yunus said in a telephone interview. But his policy announcements on moving towards nuclear disarmament, halting missile defense in Europe and securing peace in the Middle East gave grounds for hope, he said.

Mr. Yunus, who made his name by establishing a bank providing tiny loans to women in his native Bangladesh, a development copied in many other poor countries, said he heard about his own award from a Norwegian television journalist only about 15 minutes before it was announced. Normally, he was told, the recipient is informed about an hour before the announcement.

The Nobel committee has courted controversy from time-to-time ever since its founding in 1901. In 1906, it awarded the peace prize to President Theodore Roosevelt for his role in bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese war. But for many Americans and others around the world, Roosevelt was better known for his willingness to project U.S. military force, including a global tour of an expanded U.S. Navy, not to mention his pre-Presidential exploits as a cavalry officer during the Spanish-American war of 1898.

The Norwegians also earned big brickbats in 1973 for awarding the prize to Henry Kissinger, vilified by many on the left as a pushing for the expansion of the Vietnam War into neighboring countries. His co-laureate, the Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho, was the only person ever to decline the award.

The committee has also been criticized for political bias, especially after it awarded the Nobel to Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Al Gore in 2007 -- moves that were both seen as rebukes to the then U.S. president, George W. Bush.

They've also been slammed for their omissions. Mahatma Gandhi, the iconic leader of the Indian independence movement and a symbol of nonviolence, never won the Nobel, though he was nominated five times.

The selection process has become increasingly cumbersome as the aura around the prize has grown. There are now between 150 and 200 nominations every year: This year saw a record 205.

Examples of nominees who didn't win the peace prize include Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator, and Adolf Hitler, whose name was put forward in 1939.

When all the nominations are in, the committee draws up a short list of between five and 20 candidates which are then considered by the Nobel Institute's director and research director and a group of Norwegian university professors. Their reports on the candidates are then discussed by the five-member prize committee.

Members, all of whom are former or serving deputies of the Storting, the Norwegian parliament, seek to reach a unanimous decision -- normally by mid-September -- but this has sometimes proved impossible and the choice is then made by a simple majority vote.

Some have criticized the selection procedure as untransparent. The committee never announces the names of nominees and information about candidacies is only made public 50 years after the decision. "It is all done in secret, you don't know what is happening and whoever sits on that panel is very susceptible to the tides of the moment," said Philip Towle, an academic from the department of politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge.

Even in Norway, where Mr. Obama enjoys huge popularity, the decision raised eyebrows among some. "It is just too soon," said Siv Jensen, leader of Norway's main opposition party, the Progress Party. "It is wrong to give him the peace prize for his ambition. You should receive it for results."

She said that the decision to bestow the award on the president was the most controversial she could remember and was one of a number that had moved the prize further away from the ideals of Alfred Nobel.

Others made the same point in somewhat more diplomatic language. Amnesty International, which won the peace prize in 1977, congratulated Mr. Obama but said he couldn't stop there. "President Obama has taken some positive steps towards improving human rights in the U.S.A. and abroad, but much remains to be done," said Irene Kahn, Amnesty's secretary general.

—Joel Sherwood contributed to this article.

The Nobel: Consequences - Washington Wire - WSJ

After the surprise comes the question: What does this portend, both for Barack Obama and for U.S. politics more broadly? It’s early, obviously, but here are some points to ponder:

Robert Reich, Clinton Labor Dept. Secretary: It underscores the paradox of Obama. On his blog, Reich writes that the president “has demonstrated mastery in both delivering powerful rhetoric and providing the nation and the world with fresh and important ways of understanding current challenges. But he has not yet delivered. To the contrary, he often seems to hold back from the fight—temporizing, delaying, or compromising so much that the rhetoric and insight he offers seem strangely disconnected from what he actually does.

Associated Press

Chairperson of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, holds a picture of Nobel Peace Prize laureate 2009 Barack Obama at The Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on Friday.

George Packer, New Yorker: It could damage Obama. “This seems like a prize for Europeans, not Americans, and I worry that at home it will damage him politically by reinforcing the notion that he is—and will be—a world icon rather than a successful President.”

Daniel Pipes, Hoover Institution, Stanford University: It could tie the administration’s hand on Iran. The prize citation, Pipes writes, “lauds him for not using force: “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.” This is obviously gibberish: Whereas Bush did not use force against North Korea, Obama does not rely on dialogue in Afghanistan. But the statement does pressure Obama not to use force in the theater that counts the most, namely the Iranian nuclear build-up. So, from the Leftist Norwegian point of view, it’s a twofer — bash Bush and handcuff Obama.”

Stephen M. Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University: It could discredit the Nobel: “We don’t know what Obama will be forced (or will choose) to do in the rest of his presidency (which could last another 7+ years) and if he ends up escalating any existing conflicts or-heaven forbid-starting a new one, it will make a mockery of the whole idea of the prize. I wouldn’t be surprised if this award doesn’t generate more than a little resentment around the world, especially if U.S. foreign policy changes less than many people still hope it will.” In a separate post, he casts doubt on the idea it could constrain U.S. foreign policy.

Marc Ambinder, the Atlantic: It could increase domestic hostility to the Obama administration, not only from conservatives, but also independents. “One argument I’m hearing and reading from Democrats and others who are skeptical of the prize: it will turn the volume and enthusiasm level all the way to the extreme end of the dial for conservatives—overmodulating at 110%; the resulting hyperpolarization will hurt Obama’s agenda. (Representative of this opinion: “I think it will feed not just conservative dislike but the growing concern of independents and elites, that he is a man of rhetoric, a work of imagination, but as of now an unaccomplished statesman. The smartest thing he could do is turn it down. It will backfire on him.’”)

John Dickerson, Slate magazine: Pundits win! “The Nobel committee has validated the idea that speeches and atmospherics are really important.”

Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Bomb Sites in Toronto - NYTimes.com

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By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA — A man unexpectedly pleaded guilty on Thursday to leading a plot to blow up at least three prominent sites, including the Toronto Stock Exchange, in a bid to create chaos to force Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

The defendant, Zakaria Amara, who was 20 and working at a gas station at the time of his arrest in 2006, is the fifth member of a group known as the Toronto 18 to be convicted or plead guilty in the case. But prosecutors said the others were peripheral players who did not have full knowledge of Mr. Amara’s plan to damage the stock exchange, the Toronto office of Canada’s intelligence service and a military base.

But evidently the authorities were much better informed about the plot than were some of Mr. Amara’s co-conspirators. An agreed statement of facts presented to a court in Brampton, Ontario, on Thursday showed that the group had been infiltrated by two police informants and that its actions were under intense surveillance by police and intelligence agencies.

As the authorities watched and listened in, Mr. Amara organized training camps that featured extremist Islamic teachings and somewhat inept military-style exercises. Among other things, members of the group considered raiding Canada’s Parliament buildings and beheading Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as well as conducting raids on nuclear power stations.

Mr. Amara and most of the others were arrested in June 2006 after receiving what he believed to be three metric tons of fertilizer for making bombs. He had unknowingly placed the order through a police informant, and what he received was an inert powder.

By pleading guilty to two terrorism charges, Mr. Amara faces up to life in prison. Two other members of the group have entered guilty pleas in recent weeks.

Mr. Amara grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, a Toronto suburb, and as a teenager he began exchanging e-mail messages with Muslims around the world who promoted violent and radical forms of Islam. He started what became the Toronto 18 with another man who still awaits trial and whose identity remains protected by a court order, according to the statement of facts that was read in court on Thursday.

But Mr. Amara eventually split from his partner to form a cell to develop and carry out a bomb plot that he hoped would cause widespread destruction.

Evidence from the court case indicates that Mr. Amara had been known to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service since he was 16. Alarmed by what they found in 2005, police and intelligence agents hired two informants to infiltrate the group. The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, reported last month that the agent who arranged the ersatz fertilizer shipment, Shaher Elsohemy, was paid about $3.8 million by the government.

According to the statement, Mr. Amara planned to pack three rental trucks with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. It appeared that the bombs were to be detonated on Sept. 11, 2006, in what another conspirator called “The Battle of Toronto.” One of the targets, the Toronto office of the intelligence agency, is near the CN Tower, a major tourist attraction, as well as the stadium that is home to the Toronto Blue Jays. An explosion was also intended at an unidentified military base in Ontario.

About a month before Mr. Amara’s arrest, the police surreptitiously searched his house, where they found a bomb-making manual and a shopping list of bomb ingredients, according to the statement. Mr. Amara had had business cards created with the phrase “student farmers.”

Six defendants still await trial. Charges have been suspended or dropped against seven other people.