US offered rosy view before Bahrain crackdown

At a town-hall-style meeting in Bahrain two months ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton got a pointed question from a member of Bahrain's Parliament: was the United States letting Bahrain, a Persian Gulf ally, off the hook for a string of arrests of lawyers and human rights activists? The moderator rebuked the questioner for "hijacking the mike," but Mrs. Clinton replied anyway. "I see the glass as half full," she said, pointing to Bahrain's recent elections. "I think the changes that are happening in Bahrain are much greater than what I see in many other countries in the region and beyond." When it came to Bahrain, Mrs. Clinton was not the only American diplomat who tended to see the glass as half full. Her rosy assessment, which seems incongruous in light of the army's bloody crackdown on protesters, illustrates how the United States government has overlooked recent complaints about human rights abuses in a kingdom that is an economic and military hub in the Persian Gulf. And it leaves the White House once again scrambling to deal with an Arab ally facing a tide of popular discontent. In this case, its calculations are complicated by signs that Bahrain is being pressed by its neighbor Saudi Arabia, the most strategically important country in the region.