Helena Cobban clearly and frankly points out the necessity for directly involving Iran in a responsible withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.
She also points out Maureen Dowd's ommission of this in Dowd's NYTimes column on various and sundry strategies for said withdrawal.
As well as potential stumbling blocks:
... So once we have sketched these kinds of "realistic" paths forward in the Middle East, it becames immediately clear that (1) the Israelis are not going to like a lot of what must lie ahead in these scenarios, and (2) their friends in the Democratic Party won't like it, either...
That's where the key role in the ISG of Lee Hamilton, a very experienced man who was head of the Democratic-controlled House International Relations Committee for many years, will come in...
The Israelis have already, as I can see, started to read the tea-leaves, and are desperately trying to figure how they stop this train. The bombastic old war-horse Efraim Sneh has again threatened that Israel will will go ahead and bomb Iran on its own if no-one else will do the job. And Olmert is rushing to the US in the coming days...
But Israel's rightwing leadership has lost a lot of the clout it once had within the US system, by virtue of the now-evident collapse of the neocon network as well of some of the political clout of the Zionist evangelicals.
The Middle East will be waking up to a new day. Let's hope the ever-looming catastrophes can be avoided and a new sense of realism prevail.
Helena Cobban/JustWorldNews 22.Nov.06
