I just got off the phone with Flynt Leverett, a former CIA Mideast analyst and National Security Council staffer during President Bush's first term. Leverett says he finds it "really quite curious" that Secretary Rice is pleading a memory lapse on an Iranian offer shortly after the Iraq war to, among other things, recognize Israel.
Leverett himself says he "saw the actual document" detailing the offer, which arrived at the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau via fax around late April or early May of 2003, when he had left the White House to return to his regular post as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Pensito Review
Iran reached out to the incompetent Bush diplomatic team in 2003 but its calls went unreturned by the worst president ever's worst diplomats.
Conjuring deja vu all over again in congressional testimony this week, Secretary of Narcolepsy State Condo Rice said the Iranians just didn't make it clear enough for her or her predecessor, Colin Powell.
Rice told Congress she does not remember seeing the 2003 Iranian proposal, which suggested Iran was ready to discuss its disputed nuclear program, support for militant groups that the United States labels terrorists and the acceptance of Israel…
The document, faxed to the State Department in the early days of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, proposed direct talks, perhaps in Paris. Iraq was at the top of the proposed agenda, with Tehran proposing "active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization."
Like the infamous "Terrorists are Going to Hijack Passenger Jets and Fly Them into Skyscrapers" memo that Rice's National Security Council couldn't quite parse out the meaning of, the Iranian fax will go down in history as one of the biggest missed opportunities since Capt. Smith said, "Icebergs? Who cares about icebergs? This ship is unsinkable!"
My opinion is that Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al, put the pedal to the metal and drove the damn ship full speed ahead right into the iceberg, just knowing they could knock it out of the way because it was weak and they were strong. God and the neocons told them so.
"But I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, 'We're ready to recognize Israel,' " Rice said. "I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing."
Well of course you don't, Condo, and therein lies the problem. The Bush team's idea of diplomacy is sitting back and waiting for the other side to wave a white flag and say, "O.K., we're giving you everything you want and a few things you haven't thought of yet! And would you like that gift-wrapped?"
To them, it's a zero-sum game. Gone are the days of give and take, back and forth, and agreements all parties can live with long-term that win Nobel Peace prizes. Now it's just threaten sanctions, impose sanctions, and send Cheney off to the bunker to await the explosion.
"This administration, out of some combination of ideological blindness and incompetence, couldn't be bothered to explore whether this opportunity was as serious as it looked on paper," [Rice's former National Security Council Aide Flynt] Leverett said Wednesday...
The Bush administration has resisted suggestions, including from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, that it should engage Iran to try to improve security in next-door Iraq.
And these idiots want us to take their word for it when they tell us now that we might possibly need to go to war with Iran? Don’t!
They didn't 'forget' jack shit. Dialogue with Iran was and is the last thing these megalomaniacal crooks/traitors in the White House want. They've wanted to knock Iran over since forever. They figured they'd bump off Saddam, conquer Iraq easily, and have a jumping-off place with bases, oil, etc. to go into Iran.
That didn't work so pussy good, so now that they've wrecked our Army and Marine Corps they're going to do it from an aircraft carrier. Yeah, right.
They are without a doubt the most incompetent bunch that ever inhabited our halls of power. Not only could they fuck up a junkyard with a rubber hammer, it'd be the wrong goddam junkyard for the wrong reasons!
With a little diplomacy, all this death and destruction could have been avoided. Bush, Cheney, Rice, all of 'em who had a hand in this criminal venture, belong in jail. If I have to live to be 100 to see it, I will. Tomorrow would be better.
The 'can't remember' bullshit? It ain't workin' for Libby and it ain't gonna work for ChimpCo.
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