Guys, Steve Benen, working for Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com) sure had a good point yesterday, so good that I'm going to quote it in full:


Let's look back to Jan. 11, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat at the witness table in Hearing Room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building explaining why "those who talk about engagement with Syria and Iran" are all wet.  "That's not diplomacy--that's extortion," she said.

The administration has already reversed course on its policy towards Syria, with Rice having engaged in direct, bilateral talks with Syria's foreign minister a few weeks ago.  But direct discussions with Iran were always considered far more controversial.  As far as the Bush gang is concerned, Iran needs to be isolated, not engaged.  To talk to Iran is to "reward bad behavior."  We've gone a quarter-century without talking to Iran, and Bush wasn't about to strike up a conversation, especially given the Ahmadinejad regime.

At least, that WAS the policy:

"U.S. diplomats said Monday's scheduled talks with Iran will be limited to discussions about Iraq's security, and not about the unresolved issues of detained Americans in Iran or the country's nuclear program.

"The meeting in Baghdad will be the first public and formal meeting between U.s. and Iranian representatives since the United States cut off diplomatic relations 27 years ago.

"'The issue at hand in the meeting between (U.S. Ambassador to Iraq) Ryan Crocker and the Iranian representative...is going to be focused on Iraq and stabilizing Iraq,' U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week.


I don't disagree with the diplomatic decision, but it's worth noting that after years of saying talks with Iran would be reckless and irresponsible, the Bush gang is grudgingly accepting the reality that Dems have been pushing quite a while.

Would it be rude to point out how often this has happened of late?  Dems said Bush should talk directly to Syria; Bush said Dems were weak to even suggest it; and Bush eventually came around.  Dems said Bush should talk to North Korea and use Clinton's Agreed Framework as a model of negotiations; Bush said this was out of the question; and Bush eventually came around.  Dems said Bush should increase the size of the U.S. military; Bush said this was unnecessary; and Bush eventually came around.

And Dems said Bush should engage Iran in direct talks, particularly on Iraq.  It took a while, but the president came around on this, too.

For years, all we've heard from the right is that Bush is a bold visionary when it comes to foreign policy, and Dems are weak and clueless.  And yet, here we are, watching the White House embrace the Dems approach on most of the nation's foreign policy challenges.

Now, if Bush could just bring himself to accept the Democratic line on Iraq, too, we'd really see some progress.--Steve Benen, writing for Talking Points Memo


So, it would appear to just about anybody who is paying the slightest attention, that time and time again, the Democrats have proposed strong and creative solutions to tough problems that the White House and its munchkin minions like Rush and Bill and FOX "News" have derided, ridiculed, attacked, and protested through a solid chorus of brainwashed howls....

Until, quietly, Bush sort of creeps around a few short weeks or months later when, driven against the wall by reality as opposed to controlled fantasy, he is forced to embrace those same ideas.

And nobody says a damn word about how the Democrats were the first to propose the idea and were raked over the coals for their audacity. 

My God, after everything the talking pinheads on the right put Speaker Pelosi through just because she sat down for a conversation with the Syrian president--it wasn't a month later that Secretary Rice was doing the same thing with the Iranians and others, and my oh my, how quiet they all were over on the right side of the aisle.

That's fine.  What pisses me off is that the so-called "mainstream" media somehow misses the point.  They jump right on the bandwagon and obediantly quote all the howls of protest when a Democratic idea is put forth, and then when Bush turns around and does that very thing, they simply give him his Rose Garden moment as if the idea was his all along.

The only thing that keeps me from flinging my body off the nearby Caprock escarpment in supreme frustration is that just about every single Republican candidate for president seems bound and determined to fight the war of 2003 rather than the one we're really fighting over here in 2007.

And FINALLY, the American people are catching on.

The GOP candidates, however, aren't:

WASHINGTON -- In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In the May 15 Republican debate in South Carolina, Senator John McCain of Arizona suggested that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would "follow us home" from Iraq -- a comment some viewers may have taken to mean that bin Laden was in Iraq, which he is not.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani asserted, in response to a question about Iraq, that "these people want to follow us here and they have followed us here.  Fort Dix happened a week ago."

However, none of the six people arrested for allegedly plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were from Iraq.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney identified numerous groups that he said have "come together" to try to bring down the United States, though specialists say few of the groups Romney cited have worked together and only some have threatened the United States.

"They want to bring down the West, particularly us," Romney declared. "And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

Assertions of connections between bin Laden and terrorists in Iraq have heated up over the last month, as Congress has debated the war funding resolution. Romney, McCain, and Giuliani have endorsed -- and expanded on -- Bush's much-debated contention that Al Qaeda is the main cause of instability in Iraq.--"GOP Rivals Embrace Unproven Iraq-9/11 Tie," Peter S. Canellos, Boston Globe, May 27, 2007.


There seems to be a method to their sad madness, however, but even that is based on the war of 2003:

The belief that there is a clear connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks has been a key determinant of support for the war. A Harris poll taken two weeks before the 2004 presidential election found that a majority of Bush's supporters believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks -- a claim that Bush has never made. Eighty-four percent believed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had "strong links" with Al Qaeda, a claim that intelligence officials have long disputed.

But critics have maintained that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney encouraged these ideas by using misleading terms to describe the threat posed by Iraq before the war.--(ibid)

The thing is, none of these wild assertions has been borne out by the experts:


But critics, including some former CIA officials, said those statements could mislead voters into believing that the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are now fighting the United States in Iraq .

Michael Scheuer , the CIA's former chief of operations against bin Laden in the late 1990s, said the comments of some GOP candidates seem to suggest that bin Laden is controlling the insurgency in Iraq, which he is not.

"There are at least 41 groups [worldwide] that have announced their allegiance to Osama bin Laden -- and I will bet that none of them are directed by Osama bin Laden," Scheuer said, pointing out that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not overseen by bin Laden.

Nonetheless, many GOP candidates have recently echoed Bush's longstanding assertion that Iraq is the "central battlefront" in the worldwide war against Al Qaeda and have declared that Al Qaeda would make Iraq its base of operations if the United States withdraws -- notions that Scheuer said do not withstand scrutiny.

"The idea that Al Qaeda will move its headquarters of operation from South Asia to Iraq is nonsense," said Scheuer...--(ibid)


And just in case we don't GET IT, the GOP candidates are still sneering and sloganeering, even though they know full well that what they are saying is baloney:

On Friday, McCain called any attempt to cut Iraq war funding, "the equivalent of waving a white flag to Al Qaeda."

But specialists say that the enemy the military calls "Al Qaeda Iraq" is a combination of Iraqi jihadists and an unknown number of fighters from countries throughout the Middle East. "AQI" came together after the US invasion. And while there is evidence that AQI members coordinate attacks among themselves, there is little evidence that they coordinate closely with bin Laden.

In pressing his case for continued war funding, Bush last week said a previously classified intelligence report indicated that bin Laden had sent a messenger in early 2005 to urge the late Iraqi terrorist chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to aim more attacks at the United States.

But there is no further evidence that bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, exerts control over Al Qaeda Iraq, according to a senior military official in Baghdad in an interview last week.

"We don't have any direct information that would link Al Qaeda Iraq to getting e-mails, memos, whatever, from bin Laden," the military official said, speaking under condition of anonymity.--(ibid)


The reason I am confident that they are doing it deliberately can be summed up in the final paragraph of the article:

"All of the bad actors in the Middle East get mixed up in people's minds," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, which has polled extensively on views on Iraq.  "That's why it was easy to play on the perception that Saddam Hussein got together with Osama bin Laden and said, 'Let's fly some planes into buildings.'  Saddam Hussein was seen as a bad guy in the Middle EAst, so it gets all jumbled up in people's thinking."--(ibid)


So either the GOP candidates are too uninformed or stupid to be able to ferret out the complexities and complications of the Middle East and Iraq, or they are just as misguided, misleading, and misinformed as their predecessor--and just as willing to lie, cheat, and steal--and flip-flop to the high heavens--if it will put them in power and keep them there.

Yeah, but see, those smarmy tactics that worked so well in the war of '03 and election of '04, already lost steam in the election of '06, and my guess is that it will have gone the way of the dinosaurs in '08.  

You know, the ones that God created in six days.