I think I've heard this song before

So what is the real reason for Condoleezza Rice's "stunning" reversal on talks with Iran to resolve the "nuclear crisis?" The known facts are few, but include:

1. A "condition" of multi-lateral talks in which the United States would participate includes the cessation of nuclear enrichment by Iran.

2. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (to which Iran is a signatory, but India, for example, is not) allows enrichment of uranium for civilian, peaceful purposes, primarily power generation. To wit,

Article IV

"1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty."

3. Despite the "inalienable" nature of the right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, Condi contends that Iran succeeded in alienating its own right by conducting a clandestine weapons program; thus, an inalienable right of a signatory can be alienated if we need, for other purposes, to declare it alienated.

This is about all we know at this point. The Bush Administration, with its mania for opacity, rarely tells anyone, including decision-makers who need the information in order to make informed decisions, anything about anything directly relevant to the issue in question. Or at least, it never tells anyone anything true.

I would defy anyone with a security clearance lower than "Top Secret" to say a single incontrovertible thing about the "Iranian nuclear crisis." While various go-to experts, such as the ubiquitous Robert Baer, show up on "Hardball" and lay out the insider's take on what Iran "must" be doing, and the clear need to "take out" their nuclear capability, in fact, everything we hear is second, third or fourth-hand stuff that cannot be verified, or at least won't be by anyone who might really know.

Despite recent history in Iraq, the Bush Administration still persists, infuriatingly, in insisting it knows what it's doing and we should simply trust them. Here's what we know, based on the experience in Iraq:

1. They don't know what they're doing.

2. You can't trust them.

Indeed, if the intelligence on WMD in Iraq is any guide to the state of American foreign spying in general, the actual data on Iran is probably a dossier full of inconsistencies, fragmentary clues, confessions from drunks and pathological liars, political screeds from self-interested Iranian politicos, and rough drafts of screenplays written by Robert Baer and Richard Clarke. All of this rubble makes its way into the President's Daily Briefing (the PDB), which he stuffs into a briefcase and then uses as a coaster in Crawford while he plows through the latest Kinky Friedman opus.

I think that's how our foreign policy is actually conducted these days. Inconvenient truths, such as inalienable rights to enrich uranium to 3% U-235 for use in a reactor, are waved away through murky legalisms. The American people are told nothing substantive. Talks are "offered" on a "condition" the Administration knows won't be accepted, because the Persians think they haven't alienated the inalienable. The Bush Administration makes plans to test bunker busters in Nevada.

Yep, we've heard it all before. Bush has no plans to leave office without starting a war with Iran. He hasn't been "chastened" by events in Iraq, because he's unchastenable. He hasn't "learned" anything, because he's ineducable. And "Congress" is not going to do anything about it, because they're a collection of pathetic hacks and fakers.

So GWB, running out of time to fulfill his grandest of belligerent wetdreams, the use of a nuclear weapon in a preemptive strike, counts again on that One True Thing upon which he always relies: No one can stop him.