Another Win for the Jihadis

This is bloody ridiculous. Why the hell is a US diplomat speaking to Al-Jazeera at all? Does anyone have an honest belief that his statements wouldn't be distorted? That is if it was distorted.

A senior U.S. diplomat said the United States had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq but was now ready to talk with any group except Al-Qaida in Iraq to facilitate national reconciliation.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television aired late Saturday, Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department offered an unusually candid assessment of America's war in Iraq.

"We tried to do our best but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," he said.

"We are open to dialogue because we all know that, at the end of the day, the solution to the hell and the killings in Iraq is linked to an effective Iraqi national reconciliation," he said, speaking in Arabic from Washington. "The Iraqi government is convinced of this."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, in Moscow with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, later said that Fernandez disputes the description of his comments.

Four paragraphs reporting the statement and then the contention that it was distorted. Nice to see ABC and much of the rest of the MSM has chosen to lead the article with the truth instead of the distortion. Then the denials are given minimal reporting and they move on to how the US is going to negotiate with the Iraqi insurgency.

"Abu Mohammed", a pseudonym for the man, appeared to set near impossible conditions for the start of any talks with the Americans, including the return to service of Saddam's armed forces, the annulment of every law adopted since Saddam's ouster, the recognition of insurgent groups as the sole representatives of the Iraqi people and a timetable for a gradual, unconditional withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq.

"The occupier has started to search for a face-saving way out. The resistance, with all its factions, is determined to continue fighting until the enemy is brought down to his knees and sits on the negotiating table or is dealt, with God's help, a humiliating defeat," he said. The man wore a suit and appeared to be in his 40s but his face was concealed.

"There is an element of the farcical in that statement," Fernandez said of Abu Mohammed's comments. "They are very removed from reality."

But the report with writing in Fernandez's statements postures a loss for the US.

Still Fernandez warned that failure to pacify the widening sectarian strife in Iraq as well as an enduring insurgency would damage the entire Middle East.

"We are witnessing failure in Iraq and that's not the failure of the United States alone but it is a disaster for the region. Failure in Iraq will be a failure for the United States but a disaster for the region."

Maybe this guy needs to be recalled. The last thing he should state in his official capacity is that we've failed. But as we've heard before, too much of the present state department has no sympathy with the present administration, and there is evidence that the diplomatic core has done things to undermine the foreign policies.

The rest of the article is futher doom and gloom about the increased violence and deaths in Iraq. They continue to ignore the context of increased troops and actions against sectartian violence and the historical increase of violence during Ramadan. But, hey, why would we expect reasonable reporting from the MSM.