Time and time again Iran has shown that it is a real country worthy of respect. It wants what other countries want and it is willing to negotiate to get it. There is no reason not to talk with them, this is just silliness...

Independant Media and Politics: www.theseminal.com

there was a brief squib at the top-of-the-hour bulletin about Speaker Pelosi putting in for a visa to visit Iran. But an hour later, it was not repeated and I've been able to find nothing more about it.

Did anyone else catch this one?

This reprise is just another exclamation point added to the cry for, bottom line, simply competent management in the White House. Simple competence, as the first prerequisite, should not be too much to ask.
Competence means that the new President builds a team of competent, independent thinking people around the Oval Office, constantly providing input where the President is the facilitator, listening to it all, sharing what he/she has learned with others, and then making the final decision and stating the reasons for the decision. The President must be a competent facilitator and manager, not some cowboy who sees running the country as just being given the access to the toys in the playroom.
Never again can ideologues of limited vision -- limited vision being a characteristic of ideologues -- be allowed to be in charge.
The authors of Bush's Brain point out that GW never was a success in business, moving successfully from one business to the next only because people, who happened to be friends of his father, recognized the wasted potential of the businesses and knew they could both please GHW Bush, favor GW and turn a profit through purchasing the company so GW could feel he had made a tidy profit and move on. We put a failed businessman in charge of the nation, a spoiled rich kid who bugged-out on his Texas Air National Guard responsibilities and then wanted to pilot a jet to land on the carrier -- something he had never done -- to proclaim "Mission Accomplished."
He wanted to be a cowboy hero, but the bottom line is that he's just a cowboy, a good ol' boy cowboy, and he should have stayed in Texas and just driven a Chevy around the ranch.

Channing
Ventura CA USA

Rice will talk to Iran if seen as useful
30 Apr 2007 22:59:07 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON, April 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is ready to talk with Iran on the sidelines of meetings on Iraq this week but only if such contact is deemed useful, senior U.S. officials said on Monday.

A formal meeting has not been set up between Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki when they are in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss Iraq, but the top U.S. diplomat has made clear she would not avoid it.

"We are obviously prepared for whatever may emerge in terms of useful dialogue on Iraq," the State Department's Iraq coordinator, David Satterfield, told reporters.

.....

Another senior U.S. official, who asked not to be named because the issue is sensitive, said if the Iranians challenged Rice in a multilateral meeting about Iraqi border security, for example, she could at that point request private talks.

But he stressed the United States was not pushing Iran for bilateral talks and would not discuss Iran's nuclear dossier, which is being handled by the European Union's Javier Solana.

"We'll stop (the meeting) ... there is no doubt about it," said the official. "We would be undercutting our own position which is that we are willing to discuss all these things but only in the context of a suspension of uranium enrichment."

FIRM BUT POLITE

The United States accuses Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is to generate electricity and it has so far refused a Western offer of incentives and broad negotiations if it suspends its sensitive enrichment work.

President George W. Bush said if Rice bumped into her Iranian counterpart she would be polite but firm.

"She'll also be firm in reminding the representative of the Iranian government that there's a better way forward for the Iranian people than isolation," Bush said.

There will be two Iraq meetings in Sharm el-Sheikh -- one on Thursday to endorse the International Compact with Iraq, a five-year plan offering Iraq financial and political support in return for reforms.

Satterfield urged Iraq to agree on an oil-revenue sharing law that has been held up for months, saying this would help encourage foreign investment.

On Friday, Iraq's neighbors -- including Iran and Syria -- as well as ministers from the Group of Eight nations and the European Union will discuss how to stabilize Iraq, where sectarian violence has plunged the country into chaos.

...
more