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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: frankw1900 who wrote (57382)	11/15/2002 5:59:38 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Oh, much better, absolutely. A bit of an Arabist tilt, to be sure, but still, much much better. And dare I say it's because...they got people who actually know something about Middle East policymaking, as opposed to journalists? well, that's actually not quite fair, because Holbrooke and Gelb are certainly policy wonk types, but still, it makes a difference. Cordesman and Kemp are top-flight centrist Republican regional security experts; Takeyh is an up-and-coming centrist Democrat ME regionalist; and Freeman and Wilson are retired diplomats. The last two are a bit predictably Arabist, as those types generally are, and no one really knows what's going on with Iran (although Ray is as good as anybody on it these days). But the first two are among the dozen or so people I'd want advice from if I were the President making this decision. Freeman can be quite obnoxious and is very self-impressed, but had the best line: MR. FREEMAN: In any event, I take it there's agreement in the panel that within the ranks of the brilliant and well-pedigreed neo-cons there is a tiny band of mental defectives who put the president into an impossible situation in which he has to choose between political humiliation or a very risky war. tb@ouch.com