Reply #6: more thoughts

[dave_p]

Yes! Magnificent work!

Here's a start to a possible Exhibit F: Iran

US military action in Iraq was conducted without regard to its likely consequence of enhanced Iranian influence in the region through Iraq's Shia majority. Yet a 2003 Iranian offer to negotiate directly with the US on all outstanding differences was ignored by the Administration, leaving Iran to conduct its nuclear program and support for Shia movements in Iraq, Syria and Palestine in the absence of any attempt at bilateral talks to bring its activities into line with international norms in return for normalization of relations.

Speaking to the http://www.cfr.org/publication/10326/">Council on Foreign Relations in March 2006, former NSC Middle East chief Dr Flynt Leverett stated that the President had taken a personal decision that ruled out bilateral negotiations with Iran even if they offered to advance the long-term security interests of the United States: he is "very, very resistant to the idea of doing a deal, even a deal that would solve the nuclear problem. You don’t do a deal that would effectively legitimate this regime that he considers fundamentally illegitimate."

And perhaps Exhibit G: Lebanon

Administration delay of a Security Council Resolution held up United Nations progress toward a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict for four weeks in July-August 2006, despite heavy loss of civilian life, the risk of heightened region-wide instability unfavorable to the US, and the threat of increased Muslim hostility towards US troops in Iraq, thought to be responsible at least in part for the rise in US deaths in Iraq in October (106) and the whole of August 1-December 20 (an average of 75.8 per month, up from 56 in the previous five months).