Iraq Realities Force Bush to Respond

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 28, 2005; 10:00 AM



Once again, the Sunday Times scooped the U.S. press on a big Iraq war story. "US 'in talks with Iraq rebels,'" the London newspaper reported this weekend.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quickly confirmed the story and downplayed it, suggesting it should not be surprising that U.S. officials were secretly negotiating with battlefield enemies. Rumsfeld and U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. George W. Casey Jr. made an important distinction: The U.S. was talking to Sunnis violently opposed to the occupation, not foreign fighters linked to Abu Musab Zarqawi.

But the Arab News in Saudi Arabia, among others, was surprised and didn't make the distinction. "US Officials Held Talks With Terrorists" was their headline.

As with the Downing Street Memo, the Times was quicker than any American news organization to document the gap between rhetoric and reality of U.S. policy in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/28/AR2005062800442_pf.html

It's not often you see a newspaper lede that says, "Well, here we are again, sucking another outlet's dust on a scoop because we STILL don't have our shit sufficiently togther to find out a goddam thing that really matters."

IOW, the Baathist holdouts? The very people who were so dangerous that we were forced to invade their country?

a flip flop? Seems I heard ** say they would never negotiate with terrorists shortly after 9/11.