That’s not an escalation, that’s just good policy

Condi is in the Middle East, but says she comes with no proposal to end Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “I think anything that is an American plan is bound to fail.” Yes, that has certainly been the experience of the last six years.

And she again denied that what Bush plans for Iraq is an escalation. Yesterday she said it was, rather, an “augmentation.” Today she said, “I don’t think there is a government in the world that would sit by and let the Iranians in particular run networks inside Iraq that are building explosive devices of a very high quality that are being used to kill their soldiers. That’s not an escalation, that’s just good policy.”

Speaking of Iranians, the alliterative Peter Pace told the Foreign Relations Committee, “I think one of the reasons you keep hearing about Iran is because we keep finding their stuff in Iraq.” Tell me about it, I lost yet another hat somewhere this week, and don’t even get me started on umbrellas or explosive devices of a very high quality.