James Baker on Talking to Iran

According to the Associated Press James Baker made the following statements during a discussion of the Iraq Study Group report:

... he said, the administration should involve the leaders of Iran in the search for peace in Iraq. Baker said that Iran had helped the United States "stabilize the situation in the aftermath of our invasion of Afghanistan."

"We haven't talked to Iran in 26 years and it hasn't gotten us a whole long way, in my opinion," he said, adding that the Iranians "do not want a chaotic Iraq" because if things collapse there they will be "besieged with refugees."

According to Baker, we haven't talked to Iran in 26 years, yet they helped us with Afghanistan about five years ago. So why does he think we need to talk to them now to get them to help us with Iraq? Perhaps Iran is more helpful when we don't talk to them.

But Baker said that not talking to Iran "hasn't gotten us a whole long way" right after saying that they helped "stabilize the situation in the aftermath of our invasion of Afghanistan." So he seems to believe that Iran's help with Afghanistan was no big deal, yet he wants us to talk to them about helping with Iraq.

If this is the kind of muddled thinking that went into the ISG report I don't have much hope that it will be very helpful to the President.

Keep in mind though, that the AP may have completely garbled Baker's statements. One advantage of video over print journalism is that when you see and hear the words coming out of the speaker's mouth you know what they actually said.

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