Jim Lobe--Rice Bowls Them Over (Rice holding back more Bush aggression??)

[Gloria]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ14Ak02.html


Rice bowls them over
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Just as the theocratic leadership in Iran is trying to rein in the aggressive nationalism of the new president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, so Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears to be restraining aggressive nationalists in Washington who want to escalate rising tensions with Iran and Syria.

In just the past 10 days, Rice and her State Department have reportedly not only opposed proposals to carry out military raids inside Syria as a way of further weakening, and possibly overthrowing, its already-beleaguered President Bashar Assad, but they have also put forward a plan for directly engaging Iran for the first time since May 2003.

The latter move, which according to the Wall Street Journal also
includes setting up a small "interests section" in Teheran, came even as British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested that Iran was behind a series of bombings by Shi'ite militia in southern Iraq that killed half a dozen British soldiers this year. Bush himself was also preparing to deliver a speech in which he called both Iran and Syria "allies of convenience" of al-Qaeda and "Islamic radicalism".
In both cases, the role played by Rice has aggravated rightwing hawks, particularly hardline neo-conservatives who were already unhappy about her public declarations that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must do more for Palestinians beyond disengagement from Gaza. It suggests that her so-called "practical idealism" may not be all that different from the "realism" of her immediate predecessor, the hapless Colin Powell.

It may also bear some similarity to realist tendencies of Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who last week enhanced the authority of his Expediency Council and its chairman, (the former president) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to oversee the performance of Ahmadinejad's government, particularly in foreign policy.

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[neuvocat]

1. Rice bowl anyone?

Anyone?

[unrepuke]

2. Bowls of, uh . . . . sticky rice ?

[SoCalDem]

3. brown rice (cue rimshot)

[Donna Zen]

4. Diplomacy?

A contact group?

Fuck the rightwing hawks...

We need to talk to the neighbors if we are ever going to get out of Iraq without leaving behind a civil war. After all, they've been trying to talk to us for months, and the dialogue has been stopped by those rightwing nuts. So fuck 'em.