New USA Ambassador to Qatar.

New ambassador to Qatar.
Joseph LeBaron, 60, previously served as U.S. envoy to Mauritania. LeBaron's bio makes an average person feel lazy. He has a doctoral degree from Princeton. He speaks Turkish, Persian and Arabic, the latter well enough to have been interviewed by the Al Jazeera news network. He's written a book on pre-independence Sudan.
Here's what he said during a Portland interview, with questions and answers edited for clarity and brevity.

Why is Qatar important to the United States and the Northwest?
Qatar plans to spend $120 billion over the next 10 years on the energy sector. It'll spend $50 billion on infrastructure -- roads and educational and health facilities. That's a huge opportunity right there for Oregon businesses. When I think of Oregon and the wood-products industry, and then I look at Qatar -- it doesn't have much wood! It also doesn't have a lot of the human resources and skills and expertise in management that are so welcome by the Qataris.

How bad is the impression of the United States in the Middle East, and what can you do -- for example, during an Al Jazeera interview -- to improve it?
I think the image of the United States is improving. There are things that can be done to nurture that. It takes a long time, in a new assignment, to get one's vocabulary up to the level of going on Al Jazeera. I'll give myself six to eight months before I do that. I'll do local radio and television first. There are ways to say things in Arabic to make sure that the nuances that are contained in the policy are presented accurately. There may be some idioms that are useful, that the Arabs use themselves. There's an expression involving a woman who spills milk during the summer. Because she spilled milk, the opportunity was lost to use that milk in the future. There's another expression: "If the scorpion emerges, the shoe is ready."

This is a question I hope you won't duck. How will your job differ depending on whether the next president is Barack Obama or John McCain?
Look, I do the best job I can, whoever is president of the United States.

What's the main insight you gained during your recent stint as political adviser with the U.S. Special Operations Command?
I went around the world visiting special operations. But when you travel with a four-star general, even though you go to the hottest parts of the war zones, you don't go beyond the wire. So it's not as if you get a chance to talk to the local people out in Baqouba or Ramadi, Iraq. I don't really have the ground truth that you feel you get when you walk down the street and talk to people in their local language. That's what I'm used to. The power that our lives play in our understanding of reality is a huge factor. So the perception of what's really going on is very difficult to get at, because we all approach it through the different ways in which we live our lives.

The Oregonian, Sunday, July 20, 2008 RICHARD READ.