I've bookmarked that TB, to see how prescient your contact's words prove to be.
ok, now I'll complicate things a bit. I was talking to another buddy today, also a former official who is just as smart, knowledgeable, and well-plugged-in as the first (in fact, they're friends). I told him what the first guy had said, and he pooh-poohed it entirely. Cheney will indeed be going to the Middle East to consult, he said, not to present any ultimatum or definitive plans regarding Iraq. In fact, the reason it's Cheney is because he has a unique mixture of authority in the administration and respect in the region. He can speak absolutely frankly one-on-one to, say, Crown Prince Abdullah and coordinate policy directly.
The administration has not decided on anything vis-a-vis Iraq, this guy believes, and when they do decide will probably try to revivify the sanctions regime rather than go to war. His sources tell him that most people in the administration other than the hardcore neocons realize the "axis of evil" line was a big mistake. It was stuck in by the speechwriters, hardliners, and the President, who didn't realize it would be seen as such a big deal. Since there was, in fact, no policy change in the offing, the initial reaction to the ensuing brouhaha was to walk things back--but this was stopped in its tracks by Karen Hughes, who insisted that nobody make the President look bad by tacitly conceding he had made a giant blooper. So everybody has been forced to toe the rhetorical line, even though they don't have anything substantive to offer in support of it.
so--which story you choose to believe is up to you. Both of these guys know much more about the region and about policymaking than I do, by the way, so I'm hardly in a position to dismiss either case. That said, if I had to choose I'd side with the latter guy.
tb@causehe'smyage.com |
