■"In Africa, Lifting the Pall of Smoke From Cooking," by Susan P. Williams, Washington Post, 23 May 2005, p. A7.

Experts predict 10 million women and kids will die in Africa in the next quarter century because of all the pollutants they inhale from cooking fires in their homes. There are ways to get around this, and the U.S. Agency for International Development has been pushing useful alternatives for years. You want to shrink the Gap? You can't do it with the military alone. You need a very big tent, a very big interagency process.

Expect all that to be steered from an office in State? Just check out how well they've handled USAID to date since absorbing it.