The NIE - Where is Israel/Palestine?

Having glanced through the newly-declassified portions of the NIE, I am wondering whether one needs a decoder ring to make sense of this - nowhere does this report mention the Israel/Palestine conflict as a source of tension, a motivation for jihadists, or a factor in global anti-American sentiment.

Is this just one of those topics that is not discussed in polite circles within the intelligence community?  Or should the Administration be claiming "victory" with its hands-mostly-off approach to the West Bank problem?

Here is the key non-mention:

Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”
dated April 2006

...Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad;” (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims— - all of which jihadists exploit.

Maybe the West Bank issue is part of (1), "entrenched grievances".  But that hardly is suggested by the balance of that sentence, which cites "corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination".

Do the authors of our current NIE really not want to include among their key judgments that the Israel/Palestine problem fuels jihadists?  Why not?

If this is some sort of Washington-insider Political Correctitude in play, well, fine - could someone please help those of us among the Great Unwashed back onto the road to understanding?

Or if Bush was so determined to see a report that justified his relative disengagement with the Palestine problem that he sent Dick Cheney to terrorize the Intel Community with tough questions and invitations for hunting trips, let's get that story.

Or if the Israel-Palestine problem is not a driver of jihad, doesn't that merit a headline or two?  Certainly the conventional wisdom a few years ago was the solving the Palestine problem was the key to just about every other Middle East problem.

Baffling.

AN ODD SEGUE:  I liked this in the NIE:

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies.

Why the sudden switch to US domestic politics?  But there is more:

The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.

• We judge that groups of all stripes will increasingly use the Internet to
communicate, propagandize, recruit, train, and obtain logistical and financial
support.

Who can doubt it?

Comments

[sam]

Soo sorry Mr. Cheney. This time it was the Parsons Corp. My bad. Yeah right ;)

[topsecretk9]

And here is some more from that article. Must have been a Haliburton job.

Halliburton - same Co the Clinton contracted, Wal-Mart - providing 4 dollar generics --- all mean GOP corporations....Ned Lmont OPPOSED to UNIONS

Sam? Lick are ever loving asses.

[Daddy]

Dale, Excellent post. Thanks for the education.

[MayBee]

OT, have you guys seen this from http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17258#2>Novak:

CIA Leak: I must remark on the publication of Hubris, the newly released book by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Nation magazine editor David Corn, since it glosses over or ignores many relevant questions regarding the Valerie Plame affair, and distorts the facts surrounding my own involvement. The book seems commonplace for a polemicist like Corn but not a careful investigative reporter like Isikoff.

1. Corn, the Washington editor of the left-wing Nation magazine, helped create the Plame "scandal" in the wake of my column that revealed that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson had been sent to investigate Iraqi uranium shopping in Niger at the behest of his wife, Plame, a CIA employee. Now, even though his book has had the effect of killing the story, Corn insists that a parallel conspiracy must have existed, entirely separate from my column, to punish Wilson by revealing his wife's employment.

2. Isikoff, a skilled investigative reporter, definitively revealed in the book that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was my source for the Niger column. But because Armitage, an internal critic of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, did not fit the left's conspiracy theory, Corn has been frantic to depict an alternative conspiracy theory in which Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Vice President Dick Cheney attempted independently to do what Armitage purportedly accomplished accidentally. This desperate attempt to resuscitate their story line falls flat, undermining what seems to be the real reason for writing Hubris.

3. The book not only fails to use what I have written in my columns as my account of the Valerie Plame case but also distorts my position. I faced a dilemma in December 2003 because, in seeking the identity of my source, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was going to confront me with waivers from every official who conceivably could have told me about Valerie Wilson. "I did not believe blanket wavers in any way relieved me of my journalistic responsibility to protect [my sources]," I wrote last July 11. But the dilemma was resolved when Fitzgerald showed up to interview me with waivers from only my three sources. The prosecutor had learned their names on his own, so there was no use in not testifying about them. Corn and Isikoff sloppily misrepresent me by saying that my dilemma came after Fitzgerald appeared with the three waivers ("crunch time for Novak") and that I gave up their names under pressure from the special prosecutor.

4. Likewise, Corn never comes to grips with the fact that Armitage could not be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because Plame was not a covert operative under terms of the law. This 463-page book that is endlessly discursive does not acknowledge this distinction, nor does it seriously consider that she was no longer assigned to foreign missions because her cover already had been broken. It never even mentions the report that Mrs. Wilson had been outed long ago by the traitor Aldrich Ames.

5. The book's effort to cleanse Wilson stoops to deception, including the omission of Wilson's political activism such as his giving and his campaign activities as an advisor to Al Gore in 2000. This surely was known to the authors, who chose to ignore it. And this kind of omission is typical. Also missing is the July 2004 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee's Republicans, unchallenged by the Democratic minority, which undermined Wilson's conclusions from his African mission and undercut his insistence that his wife did not suggest him to the CIA for that mission. After that report, Wilson disappeared from the Kerry-for-President campaign -- something that also goes unmentioned in this book.

6. At least the book rejects the canard reported by the Washington Post that the White House had been peddling the Valerie Plame story all over town (to at least six journalists) before it got to me. It also reveals the anonymous source of that bogus Post story – falsely described as a "senior administration official" -- as Adam Levine, an obscure mid-level communications aide who soon left the White House.

[MayBee]

Oh. I forgot to bold all of point 6.

[sad]

But the dilemma was resolved when Fitzgerald showed up to interview me with waivers from only my three sources.

Rove, Armitage, Harlow, right?

[Reid]

Herewith, a listing of terror attacks of the last 30 odd years. There is nothing post-Iraq that is out of the ordinary. One guy I was arguing with said Europe hadn't been a target until after Iraq. Au contraire, as the French would say, and with good reason.

[Sue]

It also reveals the anonymous source of that bogus Post story – falsely described as a "senior administration official" -- as Adam Levine, an obscure mid-level communications aide who soon left the White House.

What? Is Novak telling us the 'senior administration official' in the 1x2x6 is Adam Levine? Did everyone know this but me?

[MayBee]

Sue- I thought it was just speculation. I didn't read the book, so I didn't know it was definite.
But it's funny. Former democratic aide (Moynihan), former Hardball producer.

Wikipedia says he was one of the last people to testify to the GJ before Fitzgerald decided not to indict Rove. He must have admitted he didn't know what he was talking about.

[Sue]

If Adam Levine is the 1 in the 1x2x6, Jeff shall be mocked till the 12th of never and I don't care how childish he calls me. ::grin::

[MayBee]

This from Oct 2005:
There were signs that Fitzgerald was still trying to piece together the Rove case as recently as Tuesday. Peter Zeidenberg, a Justice Department prosecutor working with Fitzgerald, called Levine that day to discuss a conversation Levine had with Rove on July 11, 2003, the day Rove spoke with Cooper, according to Daniel J. French, Levine's lawyer.

Levine, part of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, "was contacted as a witness," French said. Levine told Zeidenberg that he and Rove did not discuss Cooper in that conversation, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
----

Levine. Mr. 1
Sue, be as childish as you wish.

[Sue]

::grin::

I'll wait till Jeff shows up to tell my why it isn't Adam Levine.

[Pofarmer]

The problem is that McCaskill is not a moonbat.

You couldn't tell it by her statements right now.

[Neo]

The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq said in an audio message posted on a Web site Thursday that more than 4,000 foreign insurgent fighters have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Sue, I'm with you. I'm not sure I've ever heard of Adam Levine, but then I don't pretend to be the expert so many are and for sure Jeff thinks he is. One thing I am sure of, Adam Levine is not a name that has been connected to #1. Go for it gal!

[cathyf]

If Adam Levine is the 1 in the 1x2x6, Jeff shall be mocked till the 12th of never and I don't care how childish he calls me.

No, you don't appreciate Jeff's MO. You see, "1x2x6" is the investigator's shorthand for a whole bunch of news stories that asserted slight variations on the notion that "one" SAO told a journalist that "one" WHO told "two" WHOs to out Plame and they called "six" journalists out of a motive of pure revenge against Joe Wilson. We know about this "1x2x6" because somebody in Fitzgerald's office leaked the name to the press.

Jeff has fixated on the fact that Clarice defined "1x2x6" as the "1" being the "one" WHO rather than the "one" SAO and waged a one-man campaign to tar her entire article as filled with inaccuracies because of this supposed "error." Even though we have no idea how widespread the "1x2x6" nomenclature was within the internal life of the investigation, and no idea how precisely any of the investigators defined it.

So he will now claim that he was right and Clarice was wrong and we have all admitted it. The "1" in "1x2x6" was Adam Levine, not Dick Cheney like Clarice said. And he might even claim that somehow this "proves" that Cheney told Rove and Libby to out Plame and Rove and Libby called multiple reporters and when asked about Joe Wilson they volunteered an answer about Valerie Plame. He's made this claim before, and when I called him on it as a baldfaced lie he just ignored it.

So, Sue, you are kidding yourself if you think that Jeff-of-the-utterly-plastic-selective-memory will not count this as an "I told you so" for himself.

[topsecretk9]

Wikipedia says he was one of the last people to testify to the GJ before Fitzgerald decided not to indict Rove. He must have admitted he didn't know what he was talking about.

Newsweek

Nov. 7, 2005 issue - Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's decision not to indict deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove in the CIA leak case followed a flurry of last-minute negotiations between the prosecutor and Rove's defense lawyer, Robert Luskin. On Tuesday afternoon, Fitzgerald and the chief FBI agent on the case, Jack Eckenrode, visited the offices of the D.C. law firm where Luskin works to meet with the defense lawyer. Two sources close to Rove who asked not to be identified because the probe is ongoing said Luskin presented evidence that gave the prosecutor "pause." One small item was a July 11, 2003, e-mail Rove sent to former press aide Adam Levine saying Levine could come up to his office to discuss a personnel issue. The e-mail was at 11:17 a.m., minutes after Rove had gotten off the phone with Matt Cooper—the same conversation (in which White House critic Joe Wilson's wife's work for the CIA was discussed) that Rove originally failed to disclose to the grand jury. Levine, with whom Rove often discussed his talks with reporters, did immediately go up to see Rove. But as Levine told the FBI last week, Rove never said anything about Cooper. The Levine talk was arguably helpful to one of Luskin's arguments: that, as a senior White House official, Rove dealt with a wide range of matters and might not remember every conversation he has had with journalists.

So, who was lying to investigators?

[Sara (Squiggler)]

So does this mean we now have two in Armitage and Levine who should have been indicted and weren't, while Scooter continues to twist in the wind?

[Gary Maxwell]

If Adam Levine is a SENIOR Administration Official ( SAO) then I live on planet pluto, er asteroid Pluto or floating large space junk and ice thing Pluto. WTF? Adam Levine set up microphone in the press room for gosh sakes.

[Walter]

Pofarmer,

I said that she isn't a moonbat, not that she doesn't sound like one now.

Unfortunately, between TIVO and the classical station, I tend to miss most of the political advertisements.

I'll take your point as a given. I've never understood the Democratic tendency to go to the loony base just when voters are starting to pay attention.

Talent, by contrast, has been blanketing the airwaves with "bipartisan accomplishment" ads to the extent that even I have not been able to miss them.

[clarice]

Adam Levine--SAO--Gives us a good notion about how plastic press descriptions of their anonymous sources are, doesn't it?

[clarice]

And since Truthout said 1 was Grossman, we have further proof that they reported whatever the heck they felt like.

[Pofarmer]

Walter

I've been a non-partisan voter. However, noticing McCaskill's rants, and the way that Dems handled Path to 9/11, I can't in good conscience vote for any candidates with a D beside their name. If here rants are any indication, she would side with the LLL's in congress, and I don't beleive that's good for the country.

Talent has consistently voted a conservative agenda, and he's been on the right side of the immigration votes, that's good enough for me.

[maryrose]

It makes sense that Levine is it. I never thought Cheney had any direct connection to this kerfuffle. Ergo Libby has no tie to this bit of nonsense embraced by WAPO and Jeff as the gospel truth. It sounds like everyone was taken in by this. Novak's explanation makes sense-now let's see how fast Corn and Co. try to tear it down.

[Sue]

Cathy,

Jeff was sure #1 was Dan Bartlett or Andy Card. No wiggle room.

[boris]

Jeff was sure #1 was Dan Bartlett or Andy Card. No wiggle room.

Because he was sure it was true. I recall agreeing with another poster vs Jeff on the subject that the claim was implausible and the source most likely some nobody given more credibility than deserved by a scandal hungry reporter.

Whoever that poster was gets the score if it really was Levine. cathyf, Syl, Rick, Jane, Sue ???

[Walter]

On Topic?

As I've been looking more closely at the materiality and mens rea aspects of the case, I thought I had come to understand a bit more about why Fitzgerald thought he should bring this case.

My working theory had been that he was pursuing the conspiracy alleged by Corn and given some credibility in the WaPo "1x2x6" articles.

But if "1" not only did not believe the revenge story, but also helped provide plausible deniability to one of the alleged "2" conspirators, I need to consider other motivations for Fitzgerald's actions.

Does this work?

When Fitzgerald took over the investigation, he knew that:

(1) Novak described a leak with no nefarious motives.

(2) Armitage admitted being Novak's source, but not the source of other articles.

(3) Libby and Novak agreed Libby was not Novak's source.

(3) Rove admitted discussing Plame with Novak, but did not believe he was a source.

(4) Corn described a conspiracy. Wilson was interviewed and presumably described a conspiracy. Pincus described additional leaks with nefarious motives. Cooper described additional leaks with nefarious motives. WaPo described a conspiracy in detail, with administration sources.

(5) Libby admitted talking to Cooper, but did not admit to nefarious motives with respect to Plame.

(6) Libby described (and his notes demonstrate) a concerted attempt to counter Wilson's arguments, albeit not one that included discussion of Plame.

(7) Libby's recollection of Plame conversations did not fit with others' recollections.

(8) No one admitted nefarious motives in talking to any reporter.

Therefore, since Libby was "odd man out", he must have been the source with evil motives described so vividly by Corn, Wilson, Pincus, and Cooper.

(9) Because Libby's testimony as to his recollection (of not recollecting, natch) was not provably false, Fitzgerald could not make a case against him with only the Administration officials. ("I remember" v. "I don't" redux).

He sees a bad actor who would otherwise escape punishment. So, he seeks testimony that contradicts what Libby claims to remember.

Remember, I'm trying to understand just what Fitzgerald could have been thinking when he decided to go after the reporters.

In this scenario, the FBI and the Justice team working the case before Fitzgerald had determined to their satisfaction that "Libby lied". They had been told that a conspiracy existed. So they think they know why "Libby lied".

Fitzgerald gets this and runs with it. He puts the theory before the grand jury. (Didn't we learn that Cheney's annotated copy of Wilson's NYT oped was exhibit 6?).

He presses Libby on his story. He gives him an opportunity to cop to a motive other than conspiracy--trying to avoid a charge of unauthorized disclosure of classified information, for example. No dice.

So he goes to town.

But, if Levine was the administration source of the conspiracy rumors, shouldn't Fitzgerald have backed away from this theory when Levine affirmatively denied the other potential conspirator's role? Or did that only happen later, much after Libby's indictment?

Or did someone else (Fleisher, anyone?) lend credence to bad motives on the part of other admin officials?

It sure would be easier if I just accepted the partisan hack attack approach.

[cathyf]

No, Sue, Jeff doesn't wriggle, he just plays autistic. He will not respond to any "1x2x6" commentary except to crow that he was right and Clarice was wrong in her definition of what investigators precisely meant by the "1x2x6" name (a really stupid name) that the investigators made up. Even though, of course, what we know about the investigators' mental states is from some leaks, and those are not precise enough to make anything like the tiny little distinction that Jeff was making.

[clarice]

I vote with media induced brain fart compounded by liars in the CIA, DoS and Libby foes in the DoJ.

[Jane]

Could you guys back up for a second and tell me where and how Adam Levine got into the picture. Thanks

[cathyf]

Walter, I think your theory makes lots of sense, but it is also pretty frightening. Look at things from an Occam's Razor point of view: Once you have a "leak" that is published or otherwise made known, then you know that somebody leaked it. Given the knowledge that someone leaked, then you can speculate who leaked, their motivations, etc., and go out and investigate those things.

But once you find out who leaked, then you are back at square one again until there is a different leak. To investigate whether someone else might have independently leaked the same thing is fundamentally without basis -- just as without basis as it would be to wake up some random morning and decide you are going to randomly interrogate people to find out if they are guilty of some crime that you have no cause to believe happened before the interrogations started. This is what I mean by Occam's Razor -- you can't explain the presence of the Plame Factoid in Novak's column without identifying a leaker. ONE leaker is all that is required. Once you have your one leaker (Armitage) there is nothing left that requires explanation. You don't need anything else -- you don't need Libby and Rove calling six reporters, you don't need Novak to have been bitten by a radioactive spider and have developed mind-reading powers, you don't need a conspiracy of the pink lizard people from outer space. Look, logically, you can't prove a negative, so I can't prove that there weren't 24,937 other leakers, or that Novak doesn't have magical powers, or that the Wilson's 6-year-old kids don't have a classmate who has a second-cousin whose wife's brother-in-law's neighbor's mother's coworker is in cahoots with the pink lizard people aliens. But reasonable people simply ignore all of these possiblities. If you need something more to explain the facts that you have, then you go looking. But if all the facts you have are explained, then you need to stop.

What's so scary is that it is clear that anybody can come across people who will invent accusations against them, for no other reason than they are simply crazy. If the rules are that you have to prove the negative in order to keep police and prosecutors from going after you, then no one is safe, and all of the traditional safeguards of the accused have simply disappeared. And remember, the "full speed ahead" gang on this are the same ones who are outraged to discover that unlawful combatants taken from the battlefield are given only an approximation of habeas corpus.

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Wow, Mac just posted that there is no record by the police of the Post story regarding Olberman and anthrax and no record of Hazmat ever having been called.

Straw Man? Read The WaPo's Website First

[boris]

If you need something more to explain the facts that you have, then you go looking. But if all the facts you have are explained, then you need to ...

... go out on a snipe hunt.

[Walter]

CathyF,

I agree. That's why I find Fitzgerald's approach so puzzling.

He bought into idea that there were two separate leaking processes (insert flashback to frustrating code debugging).

OK, I'll buy that.

But then he started believing that he could prove it. Or if not that, at least some crime related to those he believed were guilty.

Maybe it's just a bad confluence of factors. Libby's testimony (even if his memories were innocently flawed) was congruent with some formulation of testimony designed to cover up involvement in an evil conspiracy. In a world without the allegations of an evil conspiracy, the discrepancies would be overlooked.

Jane,

Levine appears to be a communications staffer with whom Rove regularly discussed conversations with reporters. He allegedly told the WaPo about the concerted effort to leak Plame to punish Wilson. But, he supported Rove when Rove said his conversation with Cooper was not earth-shattering.

We know what Rove and Libby think they said to Cooper and what Cooper thinks he heard.

Do we have any idea what is Cooper's basis for the accusation of a smear campaign?

I mean, besides his Wilson contacts. I'm just wondering if he has quoted any actual people as actually smearing.

[clarice]

As I understand it, Cooper's notes do not support the article he wrote.

[topsecretk9]

Walter

Do we have any idea what is Cooper's basis for the accusation of a smear campaign?

NO, it's based on Novak's article of which Cooper began working on before Novak's article and in which Cooper had to CALL the smearers and initiate the campaign.

[Jane]

Walter,

Thank you. I can't keep up with you guys. I'm gonna have to quit my day job!

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Jane -- I have no other life and I still can't keep up with them, so don't feel bad.

[MayBee]

I think it's fascinating that Levine came from NBC and then Hardball, of all places. In the WH, he was "Russert" when they ran through MTP practice. Funny the little loops life makes.

[maryrose]

Jane:
I agree it is hard to hold down a day job and contribute to this blog but we do our best.
Boris: I believe I was one of the posters that tried to convince Jeff that Card or Bartlett couldn't be 1. Jeff even floated Matalin's name which was just ludicrous. Today-strangely silent.
Sue: I can't wait for you to give Jeff what-for!

[Sue]

You could be http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/09/keith_olbermann.html#comment-23054870>this person...talk about not having a life...

Hey, I've been sifting the record for the most insane comments on Iraq,

[Sue]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash4.htm>Don't look now but they are after Rove again...

[topsecretk9]

Sounds like Levine talked to FBI after Libby was indicted according to the Newsweek above...does that seem right?

Libby was indicted the morning on Friday October 28th, this report is Monday Nov. 7th and says Levine "...told the FBI last week, Rove never said anything about Cooper."

So he talked to FBI between October 31 thru November 4th, after the Libby indictment...which is interesting because Levine is the architect of the revenge 1x2x6 and he also did this apparently

The phone call that ultimately led to the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was triggered by his anger at Chris Matthews. And therein lies a small peek at how Washington works.

In the summer of 2003, according to the new book "Hubris" by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Libby -- then Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- was upset over Matthews's criticism of the Iraq war. Libby had Adam Levine, a White House spokesman who once worked for Matthews at MSNBC's "Hardball," call the host to complain.

In the call, which the book says led to a shouting match, Levine said that Matthews had been harping on the role of Libby and other neoconservatives who, Levine noted, have Jewish-sounding names. "Some of what you're saying about this sounds anti-Semitic," Levine told Matthews.

Boy, sounds like Fitz was punked.

[Jane]

Jane -- I have no other life and I still can't keep up with them, so don't feel bad.

(laughing) Trust me, if I quit my day job, I'd still be miles behind you.

So here is where I get lost. Are we speculating about Levine or has some fact emerged that proves his involvement?

[Sue]

Are we speculating about Levine or has some fact emerged that proves his involvement?

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/09/the_nie_where_i.html#comment-23039747>Maybee posted on Novak's recent comments. That is where I got the information. I will hold off on 'tearing into' Jeff until I get definitive proof that Levine is the 1 in 1x2x6.

[boris]

Or, the "source" for 1x2x6 where 1 is Cheney.

[Sue]

Boris,

As Cathy noted, Jeff may very well head down that path, but that isn't where he was headed when he had his discussion with me regarding Bartlett and Card.

[Sue]

In the all fairness game, I will have to say that Jeff will probably be able to say I told you so to me more so than I will be able to say it to him. I guessed Wilson and Jeff guessed Bartlett with the hedge bet of Levine. http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/09/whose_got_hubri.html#comment-22280313>Jeff. So if it turns out Levine is the man, Jeff will have been more right than me. I did, however, skoff at the notion it was Bartlett, if that wins me any points. ::grin::

[Sue]

On second thought, I'm only willing to give Jeff the source was in the WH. He guessed too many others, including Andy Card, Ari Fleischer, Mary Matalin and Cathy Martin, to name the ones I remember. He can have the 'in the WH' if Levine is our man, but that's it.

[Daniel DiRito]

I contend that the Iraqi conflict, as well as the prevailing Middle East tensions, will be lessened in equal proportion to the success we achieve in providing for a Palestinian state. Given that the NIE assessment posits that, "If democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives", then it would be reasonable to conclude that any progress with the Palestinian issue will greatly enhance the speculative potentiality of the NIE report. Absent the Palestinian effort, I'm of the opinion that the NIE timeframe is overly optimistic and dependent upon a relatively static progression without the prevalence of unforeseen events and escalations...which seems unlikely at best.

Frankly, I doubt that the existing Republican approach or the alternative of withdrawal supported by a number Democrats will serve to alleviate the existing conditions and bring relative stability to the troubled region. Neither approach has the wherewithal to alter the prevailing sentiment. Conversely, a voluntary effort that would demonstrate our ability to discern the profound importance of a successful Palestinian state would, in my opinion, yield exponential goodwill. Given the current conditions, such an effort has little risk.

Read more here:

www.thoughttheater.com

[boris]

Successful Palistinian State belongs in the same category with the Faster Than Light Drive and the Perpetual Motion Machine.

[topsecretk9]

I guessed Wilson and Jeff guessed Bartlett with the hedge bet of Levine.

I guessed Wilson and now that we know Levine is a confidante of Matthews I think it was a pretty close guess - as Wilson is quoted in the same passage and he was referring to Rove calling Matthews...

[Sue]

Top,

I'm not following that but if it gets me off the hook for guessing Wilson I'm all for it.

[MayBee]

I did, however, skoff at the notion it was Bartlett, if that wins me any points

I scoffed at the notion that it was anyone that knew what they were talking about, or that the WaPo was accurate in reporting it.

So I feel right about that.

[clarice]

Brava,MayBee!

Perhaps we ought to have a weekly guess the source contest.

[MayBee]

Perhaps we ought to have a weekly guess the source contest.

Ha. The only way to win is to completely disregard the description of the source, and to only half-regard what the source is supposed to have said.

[clarice]

Did I say it would be easy?

In fact the most preposterous guess will probably be the winner.

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