As the new "peace" talks between the Palestinians, Israelis, and Syrians begin in Annapolis this week, the NY Times has written a fairly comprehensive synopsis of the Middle East peace process up to this point. It generally tracks how Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld decided very early on (Jan. 2001) to disengage from the middle east because, as usual, they thought that anything Bill Clinton took on had to be bad. Because Clinton almost forged peace between Arafat and Sharon, the Bushies figured that it had to be a waste of time.

Meanwhile, Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, was swimming against the current as the years progressed, trying to forge a new "Road Map" to peace. Achieving very little and always fighting the Bushies back in Washington, he then retired. Condi Rice became the new Secretary of State after Bush was re-elected in 2004.

Near the end of the piece, there's this stunning quote, straight from Condi's mouth, concerning the Palestinian elections when Hamas won over Fatah:

Ms. Rice, who had heralded the election as a symbol of the new stirrings of democracy in the Middle East, was so blindsided by the victory that she was startled when she saw a crawl of words on her television screen while exercising on her elliptical trainer the morning after the election: "In wake of Hamas victory, Palestinian cabinet resigns."

"I thought, 'Well, that's not right,'" Ms. Rice recalled. When the crawl continued, she got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department.

"I said, 'What happened in the Palestinian elections?'" Ms. Rice recalled. "And they said, 'Oh, Hamas won.' And I thought, 'Oh my goodness, Hamas won?'"

Incredibly, our own Secretary of State not only didn't know which side was slated to win, but found out about it from CNN. AND, she chose to work out on her elliptical trainer before finding out who won the election!

It's pretty unbelievable, actually, and puts her competence - or lack thereof - pretty clearly in focus. Scary, indeed...

Ever since Hillary's campaign painted a portrait of Obama as too inexperienced to lead the country, all you hear from both the right and the left is that he's too young and untested to become President. Obama's answer, which is a good one, is to look at what all the experience in Washington has left us over the past 6 years. Not only were Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Powell supposedly the most qualified foreign policy team to hit Washington in decades, but Ms. Hillary Clinton and most of the other Democrats who voted for this disastrous war were seasoned foreign policy veterans as well.

We know where all this "experience" has left us.

So here comes an upstart and brilliant leader who has organized an especially smart foreign policy team to advise him, as detailed in a recent New York Times Magazine article by James Traub:

The United States has had only one foreign policy and one national-security strategy since the transforming events of 9/11 - and this set of doctrines has been shaped by the very distinctive worldview of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the men and women around them. The great project of the foreign-policy world in the last few years has been to think through a "post-post-9/11 strategy," in the words of the Princeton Project on National Security, a study that brought together many of the foreign-policy thinkers of both parties. Such a strategy, the experts concluded, must, like "a Swiss Army knife," offer different tools for different situations, rather than only the sharp edge of a blade; must pay close attention to "how others may perceive us differently than we perceive ourselves, no matter how good our intentions;" must recognize that other nations may legitimately care more about their neighbors or their access to resources than about terrorism; and must be "grounded in hope, not fear." A post-post-9/11 strategy must harness the forces of globalization while honestly addressing the growing "perception of unfairness" around the world; must actively promote, not just democracy, but "a world of liberty under law;" and must renew multilateral instruments like the United Nations.

Barack Obama is the only Democratic candidate pursuing this line of thinking:

In mainstream foreign-policy circles, Barack Obama is seen as the true bearer of this vision. "There are maybe 200 people on the Democratic side who think about foreign policy for a living," as one such figure, himself unaffiliated with a campaign, estimates. "The vast majority have thrown in their lot with Obama."

Hillary represents the old Clinton crowd from the '90's, most of whom are still stuck in the post-Vietnam mentality of the late '70's and early '80's:

Hillary Clinton's inner circle consists of the senior-most figures from her husband's second term in office - the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the former national security adviser Sandy Berger and the former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

Yes there are ex-Clinton-ites who have cast their lot with the young, "inexperienced" Obama, for sure. But there is a reason:

As Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council official under President Clinton who now heads up a team advising Obama on nonproliferation issues, puts it, "There's a feeling that this is a guy who's going to help us transform the way America deals with the world." Ex-Clintonites in Obama's inner circle also include the president's former lawyer, Greg Craig, and Richard Danzig, his Navy secretary.

This Obama quote encapsulates where he's coming from as far as foreign policy goes:

"The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam," he said to me on the campaign plane, "which means that either you're a Scoop Jackson Democrat or you're a Tom Hayden Democrat and you're suspicious of any military action. And that's just not my framework."

For better or worse, what you get with Obama is a different way to look at the world and the manner in which the U.S. will exert its influence. This country needs new thinking and bold innovation in the aftermath of the past 6-7 years, and Obama is the leader Americans can follow and believe in. Hillary, although smart as hell, just doesn't have the leadership qualities that Barack brings to the table.

It's almost that simple...

Remember how Iraq was never about oil? Two months ago, this little tid-bit didn't receive too much attention:

The Hunt Oil Company of Dallas has become the first international company to receive permission to drill for oil in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq since the local government issued an oil-and-gas law last month.

Under its contract with the Kurdistan regional government, Hunt, a closely held company, will join the Impulse Energy Corporation to survey for oil in the Dihok district this year before drilling its first well in 2008. The information was contained in a Hunt Oil statement posted yesterday on Ame Info, a business Web site based in Dubai.

And who is Ray Hunt?

Hunt, who is also on the board of Halliburton, has been a key fundraiser for President George W. Bush, who named him to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Although, Paul Krugman, to his credit, did comment on this story:

What's interesting about this deal is the fact that Mr. Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be. By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad's disapproval, he's essentially betting that the Iraqi government -- which hasn't met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January -- won’t get its act together. Indeed, he's effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term.

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration -- maybe even Mr. Bush himself -- know this, too.

Read the entire article to understand the nexus of oil and failed politics in Iraq.

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