"Weak And Desperate For A Deal"

Indeed, Bubba....the sands run out of the hourglass and the weak go to the wall.

In its waning days, the Bush Administration is trying to salvage its foreign policy fiasco on Iran by making one last attempt to see if the mullahs can be bought off - at any price.

Condi Rice has mobilized her minions in the State Department and has now crossed even the feeble, shaky line in the sand President Bush had before,of no talks or diplomacy with Iran until they agreed to cease their illicit nuclear enrichment and be a tad more transparent about exactly what their nuclear program is all about.

I guarantee the mullahs have been laughing behind their beards at that one, probably wondering how even an infidel ferenghi could be that stupid when Ahmadinejad has been telling them exactly what the mullahs want nukes for all along. I mean, how many times do they have to chant 'Death to America' or talk about annihilating Israel or holding oil prices and the Persian Gulf hostage does it take?

Apparently the message still hasn't sunk in, because Dubbyah and Condi have dispatched Undersecretary of State William Burns to Geneva for direct talks with Iran's new nuclear spokesmouth Saeed Jalili and are even talking about re-establishing formal relations and sending US diplomats to staff an 'interests office' in Iran, a country that openly admits that it's been in a state of war with us for over thirty years and has been acting on it.

Apparently one hostage crisis wasn't enough.

While Condi is trying to spin this frantically, I doubt even she believes what she's saying anymore at this point, although she inadvertently let quite a lot slip.

"The United States doesn't have any permanent enemies," Rice said in a press conference. "This decision to send Undersecretary (William) Burns is an affirmation of the policy that we have been pursuing with our European allies ... for some time now."

"It is, in fact, a strong signal to the entire world that we have been very serious about this diplomacy and we will remain very serious about this diplomacy."

Rice also said that Burns is there not to negotiate, but to listen. But for that matter, Jalili isn't there to negotiate either. He's there to hear what price the West is offering and convey it to his masters in Tehran, so the bargaining can begin, and it will probably continue when Ahmadinejad comes to New York to address the UN.

So, what will the Mullahs want, in exchange for an agreement they have no intention of keeping anyway? That remains to be seen.

One thing they've apparently already gotten is assurances that the US has definitely taken any kind of military action off the table as long as George Bush is in the White House...and that the US will not do anything to assist the Israelis in taking action.

The Israelis, of course may wake up to find themselves expendable, if they haven't already.

So, how are the Iranians seeing this? Our ex-Ambassador to the UN John Bolton put it quite well, calling it a U turn in American policy. "To the Iranians, it will send a sign of the political weakness of a (US) administration in its last days and desperate for a deal," he told The Associated Press.

It's exactly that, and the Iranians are probably are happily surprised at the new turn of events as Hitler was back in 1938 at the weakness of Britain and France.

This will come back to haunt us.