Here Was The Biggest Mistake

The media is still wetting themselves with admiration that President Bush "admitted" mistakes in Iraq, like his "tough talk." This is a red herring. The mistake was ignoring the consequences to invasion in the region at large, particularly how it played into the hands of the Iranians. Today we learned just how much of an ally Iran has in Iraq, as the Foreign Minister basically gave the finger to the US regarding the nuclear showdown:

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari of Iraq today endorsed the right of Iran to pursue the "technological and scientific capabilities" needed to create nuclear power for peaceful purposes, in the first high-level meeting between officials from the new Iraqi government and its eastern neighbor [...]

In his statement about Iran's nuclear plans, Mr. Zebari appeared to lend support to Iran as it faces enormous pressure to sharply curb its nuclear ambitions from the United States and Europe. While emphasizing that Iraq does not want any of its neighbors to obtain nuclear weapons, Mr. Zebari said Iran should enjoy the right to "possess the scientific and technological capabilities for research" in the field of nuclear power.

In the context of the debate over Iran's nuclear plans, such language normally implies uranium enrichment, which Iran has long said it needs to create nuclear fuel.

An aide to Zebari later must have run up to the New York Times reporter and screamed "Don't get my boss in trouble with the US," as the article tries to equivocate.

But Mr. Zebari's statement avoided any specific reference to enrichment, and a high-ranking aide later cautioned that Mr. Zebari was in no way endorsing or taking a position on uranium enrichment.

"We're not referring to this at all," Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi said in an interview. "This is a sensitive issue and it's not for us to say."

If he wasn't referring to uranium enrichment, he wasn't referring to anything. As the US loses its grip on Iraq, as troops move out of the country, what you're going to see is an expansive Shiite Crescent and a full-fledged alliance between Iraq and Iran. This will infuriate Sunnis in the region even more and lead to a wider war. But the Iranians will have the manpower and the leverage to gain primacy.

This American Prospect article has some key information about how Iran was looking for a peaceful solution to the nuclear question as early as right after 9/11, that they conceded to virtually all US demands, and the White House simply turned a cold shoulder. They didn't want a peaceful solution. So instead they went and made Iran even stronger. That's what you would call complete incompetence in foreign policy. We totally missed this boat:

The September 11 attacks created an entirely new strategic context for engagement with Iran. The evening of 9-11, Flynt Leverett, a career CIA analyst who was then at the State Department as a counter-terrorism expert, and a small group of officials met with Powell. It was the beginning of work on a diplomatic strategy in support of the U.S. effort to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda network it had harbored. The main aim was to gain the cooperation of states that were considered sponsors of terrorism.

“The United States was about to mount a global war on terrorism with complete legitimacy from the United Nations,” recalls Leverett, “and these states didn’t want to get on the downside of it.” Within weeks, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Sudan all approached the United States through various channels to offer their help in the fight against al-Qaeda. “The Iranians said we don’t like al-Qaeda any better than you, and we have assets in Afghanistan that could be useful,” Leverett recalls.

We took up Libya on the offer, allowed Sudan to commit genocide against its own people, and put Iran and Syria in the Axis of Evil. If it seems arbitrary, it probably is. Except the biggest oil state received the most of our opposition.

Iran helped immensely in Afghanistan. But then the neocons set off on their misadventure in Iraq, and they wanted Iran to go down next. So all diplomacy was thrown out the window, where it remains to this day.

You have to read this article. There was an actual framework in place for a bargain with Iran. A workable one. This was all before Ahmadinejad was President, too, when the reformer Khatami had at least a foothold with the mullahs. We scuttled it. War was on the agenda. And now we're facing an Iran stronger than the one we encountered then. What a group of simpletons.

Meanwhile, we've made Iraq so safe that things like this happen:

The coach of Iraq's tennis team and two players were shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday, said Iraqi Olympic officials.

Coach Hussein Ahmed Rashid and players Nasser Ali Hatem and Wissam Adel Auda were killed in the al-Saidiya district of the capital.

Witnesses said the three were dressed in shorts and were killed days after militants issued a warning forbidding the wearing of shorts.

Smell that freedom.

UPDATE: Larry Johnson has some additional thoughts.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Was the contrition staged?

Wolffe: ..And for me the big giveaway was at the end of that answer, I don't know if you can see it on camera, but the President flashed a big grin to those of us sitting in the front rows.