Moving The Goal Posts Again . . . .

. . . . Only now, it's the U.S. Congress playing armchair quarterback, trying its hand at "re-doing the war"

And the Iraqi Prime Minister and Vice-President don't like it any better. The Associated Press reports:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday rejected a Senate proposal calling for the decentralization of Iraq's government and giving more control to the country's ethnically divided regions, calling it a "catastrophe."

The measure, whose primary sponsors included presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions for the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities in a power-sharing agreement similar to Bosnia in the 1990s.

In his first comments since the measure passed Wednesday, al-Maliki strongly rejected the idea, echoing the earlier sentiments of his vice president.

"It is an Iraqi affair dealing with Iraqis," he told The Associated Press while on a return flight to Baghdad after appearing at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "Iraqis are eager for Iraq's unity. ... Dividing Iraq is a problem and a decision like that would be a catastrophe."

Iraq's constitution lays down a federal system, allowing Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north to set up regions with considerable autonomous powers. But Iraq's turmoil has been fueled by the deep divisions among politicians over the details of how it work, including the division of lucrative oil resources.

Many Shiite and Kurdish leaders are eager to implement the provisions. But the Sunni Arab minority fears being left in an impoverished central zone without resources. Others fear a sectarian split-up would harden the violent divisions among Iraq's fractious ethnic and religious groups.

On Thursday, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said decisions about Iraq must remain in the hands of its citizens and the spokesman for the supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed.

"We demand the Iraqi government to stand against such project and to condemn it officially," Liwa Semeism told the AP. "Such a decision does not represent the aspirations of all Iraqi people and it is considered an interference in Iraq's internal affairs."

A spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite spiritual leader, dismissed the proposal during Friday prayers in Karbala.

"The division plan is against Iraqi's interests and against peaceful living in one united Iraq," Sheik Abdul Mahdi al Karbalaei told worshippers. "Any neighboring country supporting this project will pay the price of instability in the region."

Al-Maliki said he discussed the role of U.S. troops and private security contractors in the country, stressing that Iraq is a sovereign nation and it should have control over its own security.

Security "is something related to Iraq's sovereignty and its independence and it should not be violated," he said.

Al-Maliki's comments follow a Sept. 16 shooting in central Baghdad that killed 11 Iraqi civilians allegedly at the hands of Blackwater USA guards providing security for U.S. diplomats.

The Moyock, N.C.-based company said its employees were acting in self-defense against an attack by armed insurgents. Iraqi officials and witnesses have said the guards opened fire randomly, killing a woman and an infant along with nine other people, but details have widely diverged.

The Washington Post reported Friday that a preliminary U.S. Embassy report found the shooting involved three Blackwater teams.

It said one was ambushed near a traffic circle and returned fire before fleeing the scene, another was surrounded by Iraqis when it went to the intersection and had to be extracted by the U.S. military and a third came under fire from eight to 10 people in multiple locations.

The report said the three teams had been trying to escort a senior U.S. official who had been visiting a "financial compound" back to the U.S.-protected Green Zone when a car bomb struck about 25 yards outside the entrance. The official was unharmed, it said.

An unidentified State Department official described the report to the newspaper and stressed it was only an initial account.

The New York Times also reported Friday that the shootings occurred as Blackwater was trying to evacuate senior U.S. officials with the United States Agency for International Development after an explosion occurred near the guarded compound where they were meeting.

Participants in the operation said at least one guard continued firing on civilians while colleagues called for the shooting to stop, according to the newspaper's account, which cited American officials who have been briefed on the investigation.

It also said those involved have told U.S. investigators they believed they were firing in response to enemy gunfire but at least one guard also drew a weapon on a colleague who did not stop shooting.

American officials have publicly remained mum on their findings pending the results of a series of investigations.

Also Friday, U.S. Army Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval was acquitted of charges he killed two unarmed Iraqis. He was convicted of a lesser charge of planting evidence on one of the bodies to cover up the crime. Sandoval, 22, of Laredo, Texas, was expected to be sentenced Saturday.

In other violence, 10 civilians were killed and 12 others were wounded Friday in an attack on an apartment complex in a primarily Sunni neighborhood in southern Baghdad. And north of Baghdad, at least six people were killed in a busy cafe late Thursday and people celebrated the end of the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Australia, meanwhile, said it has taken command of the multinational naval task force guarding Iraq's two oil terminals in southern Iraq for the third time. The job protecting the vital facilities rotates between Australia, Britain and the United States.

Iraq is a sovereign nation. I know this is so, because Bush and everyone in his administration told me so:

“Iraq is a sovereign nation which is conducting its own foreign policy,” Bush said in November, 2006.

“Iraq is a sovereign nation, and we stay because they have asked us to be there,” Condoleezza Rice said in October, 2006.

“It’s a sovereign nation; it’s their system, they make those decisions,” Major General William B. Caldwell IV, the U.S. command’s chief spokesman in Iraq, said in January, 2007.

Did the Iraqis get their fingers all purpley for nothing?

Joe Biden on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld : "These Guys Just Never Level"

Mike Barnicle, sitting in for Chris Matthews, interviews Joe Biden.

I think Mike Barnicle is one of the worst journalists around, which explains why Chris Matthews has Barnicle as his permanent substitute host - Matthews can rest easier on vacations knowing that he won't be shown up by his replacement. This interview doesn't change my opinion of Barnicle's journalistic prowess. It does, however, make obvious the questions that our media has consistently failed to ask, or if asked, failed to follow up on these last six Bush years.

Transcript of entire segment with Joe Biden:

BARNICLE: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware is running for president. He‘s the chairman of the Foreign Relations committee and the author of new book called “Promises to Keep.” Senator, before we get to the book and your candidacy, I was watching you as you watched David‘s film piece, and when they showed General Myers and General Abizaid and former secretary of defense Rumsfeld testifying, you had sort of a—what I would consider a sad look on your face. What was going through your mind when you were watching that?

SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No accountability. This is the only administration that no one‘s ever made a mistake in the face of constant disaster. You know, it used to be—my grandpop used to talk about you got to stand up. I mean, it used to be an honorable thing that somebody‘s come forward and say, Hey, I screwed up. That was me. I mean, think of the fact—I mean, who has been held accountable for anything in this administration? They attorney general, the secretary of defense, secretary of state, vice president, national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? What‘d this all happen on the watch of privates?

I mean, I just find it incredible, the lack of—I don‘t know. My grandpop would call it honor.

BARNICLE: How frustrated is it for you, as a United States senator, never mind being out on the campaign trail, running for president—you‘re a United States senator. You‘ve been there since 1970. How frustrating is it for you that you have this going on, what you consider to be this lack of accountability, and yet you can‘t get people to be held accountable?

BIDEN: Well, you can‘t. You know, it‘s all about elections. You know, we barely have control of the Senate. We have 50 votes. One of our colleagues has still not been able to vote because he‘s still ill. And the House doesn‘t have effective control. It‘s frustrating as the devil.

And what‘s even more frustrating, the people who voted to send the Democrats to Congress last time out expected that somehow we were going to be able to really, you know, have a—you know, operational control, really call people to task. But it‘s—it‘s just really frustrating.

What‘s most frustrating, Mike, is that you got all these folks out there who‘re just losing confidence in the government, losing confidence anything that‘s going on. And you got 160,000 families implicated by having folks over there in Iraq. They don‘t see any plan. They don‘t know what these guys are doing. I mean, it really is. It‘s—it‘s sad.

BARNICLE: What do you think General Petraeus is going to do when he comes back and speaks to you people, speaks to us in September, September 15?

BIDEN: I know General Petraeus well. I‘m in constant contact with him the last four-and-a-half years. I disagree with his plan on the surge, but I think he‘s an honorable guy. I think he‘ll come back and say two things. You‘re going to have to read between the lines. And one‘s going to be we‘ve made some progress in the surge. We‘ve made some military progress. But I think he‘ll be honest enough to say we‘ve made no political progress.

And absent some political accommodation—you just showed—you had the Sunnis getting up and walking out of the cabinet. They continued to adhere, as a lot of my Democratic colleagues do, Mike, to this flawed—fundamentally flawed premise that somehow, you can establish a strong unity government in Baghdad that can control the country. It‘s not going to happen in anybody‘s lifetime.

BARNICLE: You know, I can‘t recall a war that‘s been as difficult for reporters to cover as this war. It‘s so lethal to anybody on the ground working for any news organization.

BIDEN: Absolutely.

BARNICLE: And yet you keep hearing anecdotal information that seems so at odds with what you get out of the White House or the Pentagon in terms—fine, military success in Ramadi. I understand that. I accept that. I believe that. And yet when you hear people who continue to come back, United State senators, as well as regular soldiers, saying they can‘t get the lights on in Baghdad, they can‘t get the water running...

BIDEN: They can‘t. They can‘t. I‘ve been there seven times. I‘m heading back in a couple weeks—actually, a month. I‘m heading back for my eighth trip. And let me tell you something. I‘ve been in and out of the Green Zone, been to Muradi (ph) -- excuse me—I‘ve been down to Basra. I‘ve been out in Anbar Province. I‘ve flown over most of it in a helicopter. I‘ve been up as—far us as—I mean, the idea that somehow there‘s any cohesion here is absolutely fanciful.

What has happened here is, to the extent that Petraeus has concentrated on certain areas and localized—localized—the conflict—that is, let local tribal chiefs have local police forces and local control. To the extent that‘s happened, there‘s been some progress. But absent a larger political agreement here—as soon as we leave—remember Tal Afar?

BARNICLE: Yes.

BIDEN: You know how you learn all these—all these names, you know, average Americans learn them. Well, you know, a year-and-a-half ago, we heralded this as a great example. We had 10,000 combined troops in there. We cleaned out the city. We rebuilt the schools and the city facilities, et cetera. And then we had to leave, and a town of 250,000 people once again became basically a ghost town of 80,000 people.

I mean, same thing‘s going to happen. Same thing‘s going to happen if we leave absent giving local control, local police, local regional power...

BARNICLE: So is this hopeless?

BIDEN: It‘s hopeless absent doing what—I‘m going to say bluntly what Les Gelb and I have been talking about for well over a year. I did on your radio program up in Boston, you know? And now everybody‘s coming around to it. You have General Garner now saying—quoting—I‘m paraphrasing, Biden and Gelb are right.

The only way this ends without the whole thing splintering apart—meaning the whole country—and it‘s not going to just break up in three pieces, Mike. It‘s going to break up not on just a religious basis but tribal basis. You‘re going to see this civil war metastasize into Turkey, into affecting Iran and Syria. And we have a real problem now, it‘s going to get a lot worse. And why they continue to adhere to the prospect that Maliki can put together a unity government that can control the country is just beyond my comprehension.

BARNICLE: So what you‘re talking about, what you‘re saying is not only something that‘s going to be handed off to the first term of the next president, it sounds like the next two terms and perhaps...

BIDEN: Well, let me tell you something...

BARNICLE: ... two presidents.

BIDEN: Yes. I think that‘s—look, Mike, what happens—what happens when, in fact, we leave? We have to leave. We have our commanding general saying you can‘t—the new chief of the Army is saying you can‘t keep 160,000 troops there next year. We don‘t have the troops to do it. We can‘t do it. So everybody knows we‘re going to be leaving, Mike, and you either leave with putting together a political settlement, bringing in the international community that‘s ready to come in—because, look, the French aren‘t looking to help us, the Russians, the Chinese, but they know things are really bad for them if this place fractures.

BARNICLE: You know, back on the point of—the larger point of David‘s piece on the death of Private (SIC) Tillman—do you think Rumsfeld was telling the truth? I mean, how could it be that the secretary of defense could sit there and not find out for several weeks that someone as famous as Corporal Tillman was killed and how he was killed?

BIDEN: I find it absolutely improbable. I—look, they‘re so good at plausible denial. They‘re so good at kicking the can down the road. It‘s a little bit like—go back to Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib was a disaster. I went down to see the president right after Abu Ghraib. I said, Mr. President, you got to do something drastic. You got to literally bulldoze the place down, build a hospital, demonstrate our overwhelming distaste for what happened. It‘s not part of us. Nothing happened.

So we go back. I called for Rumsfeld‘s resignation years ago. I go back. I‘m sitting with the president of the United States of America and the secretary—then national security adviser, and the vice president. He said, What‘s this stuff about picking on Rummy? I said, Mr. President, I have to be honest with you. And I turned to the vice president. I said, Mr. Vice president, were you not a constitutional officer, I‘d call for your resignation, too. And the president looked and said, Why? I said, Name me one piece of advice you‘ve been given on Iraq from either the secretary of defense or the vice president that‘s turned out to be correct? Name me one.

BARNICLE: That‘s all in the book.

BIDEN: Well, but also...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNICLE: We‘re going to get to the book.

BIDEN: No, no. But it‘s beyond the book. It goes to your essential point, I think, Mike, and that is these guys just never level. They just never level.

BARNICLE: Senator Biden is staying with us to talk more about his bid for the White House and his new book and his confrontations in the White House.

And coming up later, more on Don Rumsfeld‘s testimony today with two veterans of the Iraq war. Has Pat Tillman‘s death and the Pentagon‘s handling of it hurt our armed forces?

You‘re watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BARNICLE: Welcome back to HARDBALL. We‘re back with Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden, author of the new book “Promises to Keep.” I read it. It‘s interesting. It‘s you. It‘s about your life.

And now, at this stage of your life, you‘re running for president again. And let me ask you—you‘ve been in the United States Senate for a long time. You‘ve been on TV for a long time, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. A lot of people know you. You‘re at 4 points in the polls.

Do you think that the country might be just going someplace else, might be saying, you know, No, I want to look at a woman for president, or a black man for president. I‘m tired of the old Irish guys—not that you‘re old.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNICLE: But where do you think the country‘s at on this?

BIDEN: Well, there may be a piece of that, but I think part of it that—what we find out in our polling, no one really knows me at all. They think, as my pollster said—I think it was she that said that they think I‘m this guy that‘s born behind a podium, went to Yale, is a wealthy guy, and knows a lot about foreign policy.

And so, you know, whereas, ironically, 22 years ago when I looked at this, you know, they knew everything about me personally, didn‘t know anything about what I thought. Now it‘s the flip. And—but I think it‘s early, Mike. I mean, when was the last time any of these polls have made a difference this early out? The polls up in your neck of the woods, out in New Hampshire, show that only 8 percent of the people in New Hampshire has made up their mind, have a definite choice. Nationally, it‘s about the same.

And it‘s an old thing. You know, recognition gets money, money gets recognition, gets coverage and press. So I don‘t think people begin to make up their mind yet. And as long as—as long as national security and foreign policy is a central issue, I think I‘m in the game.

BARNICLE: You know, when I listen to the debates, when I listen to each of the candidates, and when it comes down to issues of national security—well, today, you know, Senator Obama talking about—you‘re smiling. What are you smiling at? You thought he was trying to be General Obama when he was talking about Pakistan and everything? Sounded too much like you? What are you saying?

BIDEN: Well, you know, look...

BARNICLE: Come on!

BIDEN: Look, the truth is the four major things that he called for—and I‘m glad he did, but one of them is a surge in Afghanistan. Well, hell, that‘s what I called for when I was in Afghanistan in 2003, and Hagel and I wrote the legislation adding money. We have new money for Afghanistan in here.

The second thing he called for was, you know, aid to Pakistan be conditional. Well, Tom Lantos and I wrote that into the bill when we passed the 9/11 bill. It‘s law. I mean, it‘s already there. It happened weeks ago.

And he talked about the idea of U.S. troops in Afghanistan (SIC) if there‘s actionable intelligence. Well, that‘s our policy. The only thing you do is you don‘t go and announce it. You don‘t talk about it. But it is our—it is our stated policy.

And so I guess what I‘m trying to say is that I‘m glad that he‘s talking about these things, but there‘s—there‘s not a single thing that I heard of that he spoke about that isn‘t either already policy, already done, or has been spoken to at length before by myself and others.

BARNICLE: I get the impression, when you‘re all on the stage, that you kind of like Senator Clinton. You respect Senator Clinton.

BIDEN: Well, do like her. I do like her. I really like Dodd a lot. I—I mean, there‘s—no, there‘s people you know because you work with...

BARNICLE: Yes.

BIDEN: .. and you are certain of who they are.

I am certain of who Dodd is. He‘s a stand-up guy and he‘s knowledgeable. I‘m certain of who, you know, the governor is, because I have been with him a long time. And I know Senator Clinton a long time.

I don‘t know Barack as well. I have served with him. I respect him.

And I don‘t John Edwards as well. I know him, and I respect him.

And—but I‘m really for a ticket of Kucinich and—and Gravel.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNICLE: Senator Joe Biden, the book is “Promises to Keep.”

(CROSSTALK)

BARNICLE: Senator Biden, Scranton, Pennsylvania, this Saturday. All you Irish guys and Irish women, get up there and buy that book.

(LAUGHTER)

Blown Chance For Peace With Iran?

Did the Bush hard-liners blow a shot at meaningful diplomacy with Iran in 2003 so that they could go to war?


Newsweek reports:

Did the Bush administration pass up a chance for meaningful diplomacy with Iran before its radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took over? The question has taken on particular urgency in recent days, as the Bush administration has appeared to lay the legal groundwork for war, even while denying it has any intention of attacking Iran. On Jan. 10, in his speech to the nation announcing his “surge” plan for Iraq, Bush declared that “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.” Such a statement is considered a traditional justification for war under international law. And The Washington Post recently reported that the president has given orders allowing U.S. troops in Iraq to capture or kill suspect Iranian operatives. Then, last week, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking on National Public Radio, invoked Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which has been used by member states in the past to justify unilateral military action. At the same time the president is moving more U.S. naval forces to the Persian Gulf.

In the view of some critics, who include former senior members of the administration, the Bush team may believe that war with a clerical regime they consider to be illegitimate and dangerous is still likely, or even inevitable. But Bush and his senior aides, recognizing they have little public or allied support, seem to be putting in place a policy that incites the Iranians to act first, these critics say. They compare the current Iran policy to past pretexts for war that later proved ill-founded, like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing large-scale military intervention in Vietnam. The Bush administration intends “to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something they would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the former director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice during Bush’s first term. “When they state that the Iranians are building support networks to kill U.S. soldiers—I mean, I went to Harvard Law School, and that’s a casus belli. Nick Burns recently invoked Article 51 of U.N. charter. That’s the right to self-defense. That means you don’t need another U.N. Security Council resolution to go to war.”

Burns, in an interview with NEWSWEEK on Thursday, said his invocation of Article 51 was not directed toward justifying war in any way, but was merely a general statement of any state's right to self-defense. "We are not planning offensive military operations against Iran. We are definitely on a diplomatic path," he said. "I do not believe that military conflict with Iran is inevitable or desirable."

Secretary of State Rice has also vehemently denied that the administration is looking for a way to go to war. In congressional testimony on Wednesday, she repeated that “the president [has] made very clear that we’re not planning or intending an attack on Iran.” She added: “When we have a carrier strike group into the gulf, or provide PAC-3 [the latest version of the Patriot antimissile system], which is a defensive system, it’s simply to demonstrate that the United States remains determined to defend its interests in the gulf and the interests of its allies.” Some defenders of the Bush “realignment” plan toward Iran—in which the administration is seeking to get friendly Sunni Arab states and Israel, along with Europe, Russia and Asia, to form a united front and isolate Tehran—say it has begun to work. They point to fresh signals from the Iranian government that it may be willing to talk. “All across the region, the aggressors are stepping back,” a Western diplomat in Washington told NEWSWEEK.

Still, “not planning or intending an attack” isn’t exactly the same thing as embracing diplomacy with Tehran. In fact, Bush has specifically rejected that idea unless Iran acts first to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. Mann, as well as former senior administration officials such as former secretary of State Colin Powell and his then-top deputy, Richard Armitage, say the president has ignored or played down a number of opportunities to negotiate—especially in the era before Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005. As Powell told NEWSWEEK in an interview this week: “You can’t negotiate when you tell the other side, ‘Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start.’”

Rice was asked again this week about a dramatic opening for such a negotiation that took place in late April and May of 2003, when Iranian officials, using their regular Swiss intermediary, faxed a two-page proposal for comprehensive talks to the State Department. According to the document, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, Tehran plainly laid out the two countries’ “aims” and proposed “steps” to resolve them “in mutual respect.” The document, believed to reflect the views of Iran’s president at the time, the moderate Mohammad Khatami, proposes negotiations on most of the main outstanding issues of interest to Washington—including Iran’s nuclear program, its support for Hizbullah and Hamas and terrorism in general, and stabilizing Iraq. Some officials who saw the proposal at the time, including Hillary Mann and her husband, Flynt Leverett, the former National Security Council (NSC) senior director for Mideast under Rice, have angrily criticized Rice and the administration for not taking it seriously.

Asked about that proposal in House testimony this week, Rice fudged. Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler queried her on it during a hearing Wednesday, though he mistakenly summed up its contents by suggesting that it proposed the “acceptance” of Israel (the document doesn’t say that explicitly, though it does refer to a “two-state approach” to the Palestinian conflict). Rice’s initial reply: “I just don’t remember ever seeing any such thing.” Wexler asked her again, “So you did not see that supposed fax?” Rice said: “I just have to tell you that perhaps somebody saw something of the like, but I can tell you I would have noticed if the Iranians had offered to recognize Israel.” Then she added: “I don’t know what Flynt Leverett’s talking about, quite frankly. Maybe I should ask him when he came to me and said, ‘We have a proposal from Iran and we really ought to take it.’ I have read about this so-called proposal from Iran. We had people who said, ‘The Iranians went to talk to you,’ lots of people who said, ‘The Iranians want to talk to you.’” Asked about her comments later by NEWSWEEK, Leverett shot back: “If I had been in such a position I certainly would have done that. The two people who were in that position then were Elliott Abrams and Zal Khalilzad.” A spokeswoman for Abrams, who is currently the deputy national-security adviser for democracy promotion—but was then in charge of Mideast affairs—told NEWSWEEK on Thursday: “He has absolutely no recollection of getting any sort of fax at all.” (Khalilzad, soon to be the next ambassador to the U.N., was traveling abroad as special envoy to Afghanistan at the time, and is unlikely to have been in Washington when the fax came through.)

Such a proposal did find its way to the State Department in 2003, via Swiss ambassador Tim Guldimann. But a lot of questions remain about its origins and importance. Iranian officials insist that the document began as a U.S. trial balloon, possibly developed out of the office of former deputy secretary of State Armitage. But Armitage, in an interview this week, said he had nothing to do with creating the document and saw it for the first time as an Iranian fax. At the time, Armitage said, he thought it might have represented some creative diplomacy by Guldimann (who would not comment on the proposal to NEWSWEEK). “We couldn’t determine what was the Iranians’ and what was the Swiss ambassador’s,” Armitage said. His impression at the time was that the Iranians “were trying to put too much on the table,” Armitage added.

However, Powell’s former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, said in an e-mail that it was a significant proposal for beginning “meaningful talks” between the U.S. and Iran. Wilkerson added that it “was a non-starter so long as [Dick] Cheney was VP and the principal influence on Bush.” The hardline vice president has long been known as an opponent of diplomatic engagement. Mann and Leverett say it was a historic missed opportunity. “I don’t care if it originally came from Mars,” says Mann. “If the Iranians said it was fully vetted and cleared, then it could have been as important” as the two-page document that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger received from Beijing in 1971, indicating Mao Zedong’s interest in talks.

Mann says Bush and other senior officials, including Cheney and former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were simply not interested in broad-based talks with Iran. "I think the president does believe the Iranian government is fundamentally illegitimate, and as long as Iran stays that way there will never be the freedom that needs to be brought to the Middle East,” Mann said. “I attended meeting after meeting on Iran for years. This was the tenor of the discussions, that the Iranian government was shaky, a ripe apple on the tree.… And I don’t think war fever has ever abated.”

Others also continue to question the administration’s commitment to real negotiation with Tehran—even if its nuclear concerns are met. “If there is a coherent strategy in place to deal with Iran, I’d like to hear more about it,” Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Rice at another hearing on Thursday. “Maybe the strategy is this: by increasing pressure on Iran across the board, we put Tehran on the defensive and strengthen our hands in any future negotiations. That makes sense—provided we’re serious about talking.”

We may know soon. A senior administration official says that, after four months of silence, the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is expected to meet within days in Munich with his European counterpart, Javier Solana, who is representing Germany, France and Great Britain in talks backed by the United States. Says Burns: “We have the sense that there's a turbulent environment inside Iran itself. There's a great deal of opposition to Ahmadinejad's failed policies, and a lot of Iranians seem to understand that they're being isolated." We can only hope that if a conversation starts, both sides listen.

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