Crow for Desert

Steve Clemons dines out with the Great and the Powerful and reports back Nightmare Confirmed: Things Are Soooo Bad. . .:

some of America’s and Europe’s leading current and former political personalities were there — 60 people only — and among them a few former Secretaries of State and foreign ministers, top intelligence officials, think tank chiefs, Senators and House Members, former National Security Advisors and Secretaries of Defense. The attendance list was extraordinary.

And the conversations — on the whole — were about the crappy condition of America’s national security position.

It seems that none of the people in charge have a clue how to improve what they consider to be the US’s dismal national security situation. Which I take to mean Iraq, Iran, North Korea, the mid-East, the whole ball of wax.

But nothing. Absolutely nothing. People were depressed and dismayed about current conditions. One very, very senior Bush administration official when asked by me what ideas he had to stabilize Iraq and stop our slow bleed situation said he had exhausted what he felt was possible.

Another top tier official when another guest pushed him to move the President into some rational deal-making that might trigger a more fruitful trend, ominously said “don’t hold your breath.”

Maybe if they would just all quit in disgust we might get in a fresh team with an idea or two?

Or at least if there were enough resignations, Bush might get the message?