Lame duck reversing course?

A recent guest post at Tony Karon's Rootless Cosmopolitan by Gary Sick, a knowledgeable analyst of U.S.-Iran affairs, struck me as worthwhile when it appeared just before the Annapolis meeting.

Now it's even more worthy of a look, in light of DNI Mike McConnell's declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran -- delayed for many months because of its conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program has been dormant since 2003. Many commenters have wondered why the Bush regime would have allowed this release, since it's eliminated one of their major arguments for war.

Part of Karon's summary:

Gary argues that while some factors now point towards the possibility of a U.S. opening to Iran in the final year of the Bush Administration, this remains a “policy that dare not speak its name,” meaning that any such shift will definitely not be declared even if it is underway.

Gary Sick: The Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name

If Sick is right, my conviction that the regime will strike Iran before leaving office is wrong. Never so happy to be proved wrong in my life! Now to keep a close eye on the signs one way or the other...

Saturday syndrome

Today's Washington Post continues the tradition, noted here before, of submerging stories that reflect poorly on our permanent national security state in the least-read edition of the week: "Jordan's Spy Agency: Holding Cell for the CIA."

Credit where credit is due -- the story's on the front page, and the subhead actually contains the magic word: "Foreign Terror Suspects Tell of Torture."

Apologies for lack of posting. The pace may or may not pick up; I'm trying to stay away from politics for my own mental health. This story speaks too strongly to what got me involved in political work to ignore.