Engaging in substantive dialogue with Iran has long been needed; the need has never been more critical. Department of State, subject as it is to the will of the President, has not been getting it done. A visit or visits to Iran by a bipartisan Congressional delegation would not go over well with the Bush administration. Good; the executive branch team needs a fire lit under it.

The political future of Iraq can't be cast by the occupying Coalition. Nation-building there has not been a success, it's past time to admit, and it will never look or smell like victory. Partition should not be considered a solution that the USA and allied nations can impose upon Iraq.

Without a timetable for troop withdrawals, the parties in Iraq won't come to terms with the hard joint decisions that must be made. Their birth and growing pains can't be entirely prevented. A clock ticking down toward a deadline would spur the parties to get going with planning the future of Iraq.

Would having a withdrawal plan tie the hands of the USA? Not really. No one in Congress or in the Bush administration is proposing leaving the Middle East. Every spot in the region is within striking distance militarily, and a true (not phony) national or international emergency would trump any timetable commitment. US national interests (which are not all we should be concerned about) are not best served by staying the course militarily in Iraq and by disdaining diplomatic engagement with Iran.

Larry Johnson, I bet you've got those Members of Congress who heard you started on some serious brainstorming. I hope so.

It seems as if Iran is all too eager to strike a diplomatic agreement with the United States. The Bush administration has done a wonderful job of painting Iran as an all powerful, evil nation (ala the Cold War Soviet Union)that has all strategic advantages.

In reality, Iran is a country with major economic problems and a populace that is every bit as unhappy with its government as most people in the U.S. are with theirs. But unlike the United States, which participates in the game from the comforts of its own continent thanks to the Monroe Doctrine, Iran has nowhere to hide.

There is little question that Iran could cause serious problems for Israel and the United States should a war result. But like Germany during the World Wars, it will destroy itself and its cities in doing so.

In short, the United States may be in "pickle" as Larry puts it; but so, too, is Iran. The Bush administration has no interest in enlightening the general public as to the severe problems facing Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

Why would they want to do that?

Larry, isn't Dick Cheney the key person to get on board? Until the man changes his meds, I'm afraid he doesn't give a damn what Congress thinks or what legislation they pass. Uncle Dick is still going to try to pressure Boy George into launching a strike against Iran. and if Boy George thinks Jesus wants him to do it - he'll do it. We're dealing with real loonies here and only impeachment and conviction will stop them.

Your optimism is encouraging in the face of all the bad news this past month. One question as was asked above. If there is so much enlightenment within congress why did the Kyle-Lieberman bill pass by such a massive margin?

I know that we're dealing in impressions here, but my impression is different. Iran may have been willing to negotiate in the past but since being threatened with nuclear attack, undergoing attacks by US-fomented MEK terrorist activities, having their citizens kidnapped in Iraq, and experiencing increasing sanctions (which are a soft act of war) Iran has looked elsewhere for support and found it, and so is not as willing (or is unwilling) to negotiate with the US. Plus they are emboldened when they see the US in military quagmires on either side of them.

How else to explain Iran's intransigence under UN challenges?

The US likes to portray Iran as being "in a pickle" but I see them more "in the cat-bird seat". Iran has many options and many friends, the US has few friends and seemingly only one real option--military aggression.

1. Larry's a good guy (for a Republican) but, hey, how smart do you have to be to understand the Iraq quagmire? Or, how dumb do you have to be to ask someone else what should be done when you've (Congress) been voting money for it for four years? Are congress-critters "just waking up" or are they looking for a way to finesse these profitable wars into something even more profitable? A senator has to raise ten thousand dollars every day.

2. The Iraq army is a joke, just like the last puppet army in Vietnam. They have little or no equipment (that they haven't already sold), are unmotivated (because the US troops will do the heavy lifting), only work part-time (two weeks on and one week off) and have no heavy military weapons or logistical support capabilities. Thank you, General Petraeus.

3. Reports about extensive 'sovereign' Iraqi government corruption have been stifled by the (corrupt) US State Dept., which has also punished its own whistleblowers and lied to defend Blackwater. How sovereign is Iraq when Maliki's order that Blackwater leave the country is brushed aside?

4. Apparently (it's difficult to find out) the Iraqi government is only 'sovereign' over one of its ten army divisions. The US was supposed to turn over control of the rest this year, but probably hasn't. Why? Could it be lack of trust, or even fear?

5. Republicans and Democrats are agreed that the US military must stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. There are strong ties between Iraq and Iran, and the US can't (they think) abandon Iraq to Iranian control. This, despite the will of the American people in this 'democracy'.

6. Iran has to be dealt with (they say) for their nuclear program and their (natural) meddling in Iraq. The US will not accept Iranian hegemony over their own land, and hasn't for decades. The US is effectively at war with Iran now, if you consider as acts of war: economic sanctions, kidnapping citizens, threats of attack and assisting terrorism. The US has attacked countries for much less.

7. Saudi Arabia, the prime backer of terrorism in the world, and a despotic regime, is just as untouchable as Israel is, and for some of the same general reasons.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

It's true that unity of purpose can achieve much more than analytic paralysis. Simultaneously with the American effort, however, Iraqis can only free themselves not by fighting continual wars of liberation from one another's factions, but by coming together in unity long enough to get momentum behind a sustainable form of government that eases the factional fears and frees them from the possibility of being forced to adopt the others' deep seated religious and cultural preferences.

Iraq is not so different from the U.S. in this. We struggle with keeping our hands off each other's freedoms here, and as long as we remain diligent about this at home, we have the credibility to speak of it to Iraqis.

What Iraqis in particular must be able to feel secure about is that their religious ID will not be punished by fraudulent exclusions from economic opportunity or government participation, power and access. To do that, they need a strong legal system they can trust which can and will guard all constitutional interests without regard to religious ID, race or tribe. They have to see that work for them.

Re: Iran, what is its real conduct versus its words, and how would a successful Iraqi constitutional form of governance threaten it? I suspect it would threaten Iran's notion of religious ID control over Iranian public affairs. And unless that objection or fear can be overcome, and the obstacles to overcoming that fear, how can Iran be won over? Iran is sufficiently homogenous in its Shi'a majority that it need not worry that its religious ID will be stolen by the West. Russia had the same fear and it is in part why Russia cracked down on Western religious-oriented non-profits as assailing at least the notion of traditional Russian Orthodoxy with various evangelical campaigns to remake Russian culture. This was a big mistake, because it enabled authoritarians who lost control of the Russian people in part because they wanted their faith to be free and alive again, to pretend to be the first guardians of the faith and so steal its genuineness via government control as far as the top is concerned.

It should also be clear that Russia doesn't want the US to have more influence in the region than it has, so getting reliable help from Russia seems to be an essential goal for peace with Iran's overt and covert government players. How?

If we are to see peace and trade with the Eastern world, near and far, the US absolutely must take a look at what is wrong with itself and its own cultures that threatens other cultures. Government funded, aggressive secularization is one of those things. That doesn't mean making the government of the US religious, just making it restrain itself from pushing itself into more and more corners of US society and thereby evangelizing the country to compulsory secularism wherever it has expanded itself.

Finding a stable, peaceful and productive relationship with the East means admitting that there are serious ills born of twists on Western civilization's ethics about faith and freedom. Chief among destructive notions is that endlessly expanding government is OK, and that stamping out religious history, memory, influence and existence in US society is OK. These two errors reinforce each other.

Another poor substitute for thinking is the idea that religious people are necessarily hostile to science, or that their practice of the faith or teaching it in society is a danger to empirical progress. These assumptions create their own animosity and threaten religious peoples so that they don't trust scientific work because of those who want to make science a government or a religion of itself.

Although the Constitution guarantees religious freedom doubly, a few privileged voices in America and the UK argue that religion is ignorance and fairy tales. This simplistic view is itself ignorance and prejudice on scale with racism. On the contrary, religious life is an unquestionable part of what has made Western civilization thrive, minus whatever evil individuals or conspiracies of wrongdoing have done to besmirch all institutions. We seldom argue that having a government is ignorant because some abuse it.

One of the guarantors of prosperity, ironically, is not only a legal system that protects all faiths from government encroachment or manipulation, but also protects them from government funding of organizations hostile to them as much as it protects government from falling into the hands of one or another religious organization.

In Middle Eastern culture, there are social institutions which leverage factional interests over resources tied to religious ID. Such institutions, tribal or filial, must be engaged with an open dialogue on how to achieve their objectives (if they're not totalitarian) without violating what most religious faiths consider a wrong: coveting, stealing and draining one's neighbor.

Larry,

Anything that can be done to make the discussion of the occupation one that is reality-based is a major step forward. I'd prefer this discussion be more public, because I think there are plenty of republican folks on the Hill who know that Iraq is FUBAR, but lack the political courage to break with the president. In the absence of such a public discussion, a no BS briefing is a big step forward.

I do think, though, you have to give us (as broad an us as you want to define) some idea of how to reconcile the idea of Iraq sovereignty with protection of US oil interests and with the need for the continued presence of US troops in any role (beyond the Marines guarding a normal embassy presence, as in, say, Egypt).

It has always been clear to me that the plan for Iraq is the permanent basing of US forces there, in large numbers, to supplant the Saudi bases and to occupy a key strategic position. I do not see any way that a sovereign Iraqi government that is in the least bit representative (i.e. as representative as the Iranians are) would permit the presence of a significant US military presence.

I have never seen any way to reconcile the geopolitical need for bases to guarantee oil flows with the geopolitical need for an independent, sovereign and stable Iraq government.

I'd be curious to hear how you suggest these mutually exclusive, but core foreign policy elements, can be reconciled.

Amidst all the discussions of security and political benchmarks, humanitarian issues need to be given a prominent place; those issues pertain both within Iraq and in neighboring countries that have received many thousands of refugees.

True: Without greatly improved security, humanitarian remedies, or reconstruction or resettlement, cannot be fully pursued . Yet all nations with any influence in Iraq, and Iraqis in positions of power and influence, should weigh in against efforts to keep humanitarian issues out of the news and off the priority lists of international bodies and alliances. The human tragedies, and especially the unacceptable prospects for displaced and deprived children, should provide motivation enough, but those who find the human tragedies insufficiently moving should consider what the long-term displacement of hundreds of thousands bodes for the future, politically, economically, and militarily. Those from the USA and Coalition who don't care about any of that should think about the current and historical reputation of the invaders and occupiers who came promising liberation, democracy, and better lives. The humanitarian crises won't go away on their own, and war against Iran would make humanitarian situations in the region much worse.

How about spending 1/2 trillion dollars a year
on breaking the oil habit, instead of reinforcing
our capacity to invade other countries to take
their oil by force? Call it democracy, call it
dingleberries in 10w40 sauce, I call it a
bald-faced lie, and impeachable to boot,
considering Dick 'conflict of interest/halliburton/energy policy' Cheney's
in there, running things. But, such IS the power
of the oil biz over our Con Me that this
alien facehugger-like relationship continues,
and Congress is demoted to the rank of
check-kiting yes-men...not exactly a co-equal
branch of government, when they just sit around
holding faux arguments, ducking the job altogether, waffling on key issues, and failing
to provide the kind of leadership and unity
of purpose that'd put the Penta$cam back on
its' heels and sit up and take notice of, but
hey, that's why we pay these Ladies N Gentlemen
160-180k/yr, right, to whiff even the softball
pitches, to mill about aimlessly when confronted
with key issues, and to just kind of stand
there like they were hypnotized while a stampeding herd of war profiteers makes off with
whatever's really left in the Treasury, which
likely ain't much if the papers are to be believed. Maybe, in some sort of twisted way,
we deserve Blackwater and runaway war, for
failing to have taken issue with Congress all
these years. Then again, when all you get to
cast your ballot on is whose friends, brothers,
buddies, cousins, and in-laws get elected to
what cushy government job, or how much tax you'll
be paying next year on everything you buy, it's
easy to understand the tune-out factor, there...

"I do think, though, you have to give us (as broad an us as you want to define) some idea of how to reconcile the idea of Iraq sovereignty with protection of US oil interests..."

I agree. Iran seems to be about the control of oil and nothing more. All the terrorism and nuclear containment talk is a bunch of giberish, a smoke screen that distracts the true purpose: domination of oil.

To boldly go...

I doubt that Iran listens to Bonkers Bolton. It's plainly obvious that the UN is making unwarranted claims on Iran, because they've done nothing illegal, whereas the hundreds of UN censures of Israel have been warranted by their illegal behavior.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

He will do as he pleases WITH their blessing because the Democratic Congress refuses to even threaten to cut off funding for any lunacy he wishes to commit. The Democratic Congress is funding it. The Democratic Congress is responsible. As they said during Watergate, follow the money. Congress controls the money. Congress is controlled by Democrats. Pelosi, Reid, Hillary and all the gang assume we're all going to forget this in 2008. I will not.

Not as much as it was when Everett Dirksen was in the Senate.

I'm with many others here and probably around the nation in that I too will remain very skeptical of this so called bi-partisan charade. I'm sorry but there's been absolutely no real signs of intelligence or leadership from either side of the aisle in Washington for years upon years. Actually, the thought of these crooked idiots "coming together" isn't exactly the most soothing of thoughts in my mind and it is far from what I envision as bi-partisan. But if you wanted you could say that these shiftless power squatters have been "coming together" for years in protecting themselves from any real accountability but that's about as far as I'd go with it. Color me unimpressed.

In my mind the entire thing reminds me of a drunk driving accident. Sure, the drunk driver (if they survive) is almost certainly going to admit they probably shouldn't have driven and may even give you their word that they'll never do it again. But if you leave a running vehicle next to them, and leave both unsupervised, my money's on the drunken idiot getting into that vehicle and driving away from the scene in a ridiculous attempt to finally reach his intended destination. Oh and the number of injured, maimed and killed by that drunken fool along the way never enter into his foggy vision of reality.

No, I'm sorry Larry but these fools in our nation's capital are all drunks. Some literally but nearly all are drunk on power. And I'm sick of hearing excuses made for every car they crash and crowd they run into all while trying to get to what amounts to the next bar to continue getting piss drunk. It's not enough to fine these fools. It's not enough to throw them in a cell over night to sober up. We need to take away their licenses. They are repeat offenders who can and will continue to drive (our nation to destruction) while they are drunk (on power). And I'm a little shocked that a room full on drooling/nodding/power drunks who where simply trying to act sober would so impress you. At the very least you should have been able to smell it on their breath. Either way Larry, if they offer to give you a ride to the next bar, say no. Take a cab instead.

"Congress is demoted to the rank of check-kiting yes-men...not exactly a co-equal branch of government"

self-demotion would be more accurate.

Presidents seek to expand their power -- that is the nature of the beast, as our Founding Fathers well understood. That is why they created Congress, to hold the Chief Executive in check. But lately Congress, in the spirit of bipartisanship, has seen fit to disavow its oath of office: To protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.

Somebody needs to wake them up. Too bad the media is asleep too.

I'll mention just 2 Dems that give me heartburn; Pat Leahy and Jay Rockefeller.

When Leahy was ranking minority member to Chairman Arlen Specter he expressed daily his outrage at the Bush gang. Fast forward, Leahy is now chairman and what do we get? Bloviating and no action. 'If the Bush administration doesn't obey this subpoena I'll be forced to give them 6 more months!'

Rockefeller was ranking member to chairman Pat Roberts on Intelligence. Roberts kept stalling on the second phase of an agreed to investigation on how the Bush gang used INTEL to get us into Iraq. Rockefeller babbled, Harry Reid shut the Senate down for a day to force a secret meeting looking into Robertson's non action. Fast forward;

Yo Chairman Rockefeller, Yo Harry......the second investigation, the one into how the Bush gang used/misused Intel? Did you forget???

Bloviators all.

While I am desperately trying to feel bouyed by your report, Larry, ultimately it doesn't matter what Congress says or does with respect to Iran. Bush will do as he pleases with or without their blessing. Have you forgotten that he is The Decider? The latest comments by Petraeus are just another step down this inevitable road.

As for Iraq, Bush and Congress will remain in denial that the major sources of violence there are the turf-wars between those we purportedly went in to free and our presence.

~

Our sole interest at this time is to find some way to bring the carnage to an end, avert a brutal civil war, and foster a stable peace in the region.

". . . the ultimate exit strategy in the Middle East is called JOBS!"

Geez ... I agree, I guess old sailors see things too damn clearly.

~OGD~

These sorts of discussions serve to underline the fact that our primary policy failure, the lack of any serious effort to obtain energy independence, virtually assures a plethora of bad options on the way to strategic failure.

Our problem is oil. Get rid of the oil problem, and we won't have to worry about Iran, Iraq, Saudi, etc.

Until we free ourselves of oil, we will be spending oodles of blood and treasure in the Middle East. Full stop. Policy nuances won't matter, except at election time.

I'm not necessarily buying into all of Larry's recommendations, on the other hand, failing to recognize the importance of how we leave and what we leave isn't any more rational than staying forever.

Another fact to consider is that not everything a government at war says about the timing of its activities is going to be 100 accurate for the sake of maintaining some protection via deception. The "long haul" view may be for real, or it may be designed to keep those who would swoop on the carcass of attempted-Iraq from timing their post-US operations against the peace and give those forces of organization some advantage to make something of the government.

Incidentally, another security situation is reportedly deteriorating in Lebanon. If a civil war breaks out there in which Syria back Hezbollah and Russia backs Syria while Iraq-Iran distracts the US, what is your viewpoint on what the US response should be?

Let's call Jacobs an analyst who doesn't analyze.

As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and as a retired army colonel who has taught at West Point he is really a proponent of US interventionist military policy, not an analyst. And I'm sure that the US does know where all the targets are. Here's a list of Iran's SAM locations, for example.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

Apparently there is some concern about the apparent Israeli jamming of Syrian air defense capabilities during the recent raid.

news report:
The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions where approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages that allow a number of activities including control...

...More interesting is the newspaper’s claim that “Russian experts are studying why the two state-of-the-art Russian-built radar systems in Syria did not detect the Israeli jets entering Syrian territory,” it said. “Iran reportedly has asked the same question, since it is buying the same systems and might have paid for the Syrian acquisitions.”

But plastics can be made from renewable resources, in fact they are.  DuPont Sorona is a bio-plastic (as if petroleum wasn't bio, eh?) and it can be made much cheaper than petroleum base plastic.  Henry Ford made soy bean body panels for Model Ts that were extremely durable, but I think the problem was that the cows ate them. 

But your point is well taken.  Lubricants, kerosene, tar, asphalt and a host of other products come off the refinery's cracking towers.  But I'll bet manufacturers are very keen on cheaper alternatives, especially given the roller coaster oil prices over time.  

I think with the breakthroughs in nanotechnology we'll see more carbon products in the consumer market.  Right now it's pretty expensive - but epoxies are being made now from plant material, and just think, we could get all the carbon we want from the atmosphere.  Wouldn't that be a gas?   

Neoboho

Nope, you're absolutely right neoboho. There are indeed many alternatives either being used now or that are currently being developed. And I find all of these advances extremely promising. They are in fact critical to our nation's survival. If we can not make a transition from oil to the still uncrowned king of future resources we are going to find ourselves fading into global obscurity along with biting a drum magazine full of economic bullets. But change is difficult, especially big changes dealing with old ways of thinking.

Many of those alternatives do have limited applications though or they are not as cost effective as our profits above all else country operates. Many companies will likely need to be "prodded" transitioning into using them. And in order to easy the pain, many consumers will need to be convinced to pay more and encouraged to make things last longer. All of these are daunting tasks and in some cases fly directly in the face of our current incarnation of capitalism. You mean making a car that runs efficiently for a long period of time so people won't need to buy new ones every 3 years?

The other side of the coin is that even the R&D in developing many of these new products uses fossil fuels. So the sooner we get rolling on all of this the better. But it really is dizzying if you start breaking it all down. It's like the silly commercial of a doctors office where everything with plastic in them are made to disappear with some nifty CG work. Only the reality of just how deeply woven fossil fuels are in our society would leave us standing in a void with little left but rocks, dirt and whatever remaining trees we have left!