Kinda' makes me wonder.

posted by The Vidiot @ 12:51 PM Permalink

Today, there's an interesting story in the WaHoPo about how Iran had wanted to set up talks with the United States in 2003.

Excerpt: "I got the clear impression that there is a strong will of the regime to tackle the problem with the U.S. now and to try it with this initiative," Tim Guldimann, the ambassador, wrote in a cover letter that was faxed to the State Department on May 4, 2003. Guldimann attached a one-page Iranian document labeled "Roadmap" that listed U.S. and Iranian aims for potential negotiations, putting on the table such issues as an end to Iran's support for anti-Israeli militants, action against terrorist groups on Iranian soil and acceptance of Israel's right to exist.

but according to Flynt Leverett, a former Bush National Security Council official, when Powell presented the plan to the White House, he was "rebuffed".

Excerpt: “I know as a fact from multiple sources this went all the way up to Secretary Powell,” Leverett said, citing multiple sources at the State Department and the NSC. “In [Secretary Powell’s] words, he ‘couldn’t sell it at the White House.’”

So, Iran offered to talk just a few months after bombing Iraq had commenced, but the White House said no.

Is it possible?

Could it be?

That they were planning to go to Iran all along?

Now, bear with me.

If that's true, that they were planning to go to war with Iran from the get-go, it puts this little tidbit into some perspective.

Excerpt: According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Maybe, just maybe, the whole "political attack on Joe Wilson by getting at his wife" thing is a ginormous red herring. Sure, it's believable. In politics, smears happen all the time. But what if this time, the smear was more than a smear. The smear was actually a coverup, not of who leaked the name to the press, but a coverup of the real reason to out Valerie Plame: to wreck her group's ability to do good intelligence gathering on Iran so that when the administration started to gin up a war with Iran, there would be nobody there to counter their crazy assertions.

Hmmmmm...... (she said, stroking her imaginary van dyke.)

Or, I could be completely wrong.