Cables offer dim view of Panama's president, whom Obama is about to meet

Ah, to be a fly on the Oval Office wall Thursday as President Obama meets with Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, the subject of a series of State Department cables that WikiLeaks obtained.

The cables aren't kind to Martinelli. They describe him as a man of "limited attention span" who "makes strong impulsive decisions with minimal information."

They cast him as vindictive, authoritarian, fixated on spying on his political foes and contemptuous of checks on what one cable calls his "hyper-presidency."

Original source: Miami Herald