Iran's Caucus Race

"'You'd have to be an idiot to trust the North Koreans,' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently. Apparently unaware of the irony, she then predicted eventual success for the six-party talks on the North's nuclear weapons program. ... Mr. Obama has pledged more negotiation and multilateralism--less sabre-rattling and 'take it orleave it' unilateralism. While Iraq was Mr. Obama's focal point in the campaign, the biggest problem ahead is countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. ... And where Mr. Obama differs with Mr. Bush, he is only more accomodating to the intractable rogues running Pynogyang and Tehran. This is decidedly bad news. ... The talks are classic multilateral diplomacy, pursued since 2003 with notable deference to North Korea. There's been about as much engagement with Pyonyang as consenting adults can lawfully have. ... On Iran, also for over five years, Mr. Bush has endorsed vigorous European diplomacy. The Europeans offered every imaginable carrot to pursuade Iran to drop its nuclear program in exchange for a different relationship with Europe and America. This produced no change in Iran's strategic objective of acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons. The only real consequence is that Iran is five years closer to achieving that objective. It has now indigenous mastery over the entire nuclear fuel cycle. ... What does Mr. Obama think Mr.Bush and the Europeans have been doing? Does he really think his smooth talking will achieve more than Europe's smoothest talkers, who were in fact talking for the whole time? ... Mr. Bush's flaw was believing that negotiation and mutual concession could accomplish the U.S. objective--the end of proliferation threats from Pyongyang and Tehran--while the objectives of our adversaries were precisely the opposite. They sought to buy valuable time to improve their nuclear programs, extract as many carrots as possible, and play for legitimacy on the world stage", my emphasis, John Bolton (JB) at the WSJ, 2 January 2009.

Not everthing JB. We have not dropped H-Bombs on Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Look into Putin's heart. Is our State Department so stupid it did not realize why Iran talked to us? These talks were endorsed by the Dodo who ran the Caucus Race in Wonderland.