Posted 8/20/2002 06:28:00 PM by Ocean Guy
Jonathan Tobin writes of Donald Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld cemented his claim to the title of the most honest man in Washington last week when he stunned the foreign-policy establishment by telling a forum of Pentagon employees that any peace deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority leadership wouldn't work because they are "involved in terrorist activities."

ITs' a shame that merely stating the obvious makes you the most honest man in DC. More on the recurring disagreements in policy with Colin Powell:

Each are always determined to be in the driver's seat of American diplomacy. On the key question of American policy in the Middle East, Powell has clearly been at odds with Rumsfeld. Powell's statements make it clear that he would have been comfortable in the Clinton administration when pressure on Israel to make drastic, even dangerous concessions to the Palestinians was the order of the day.

Rumsfeld understands that Clinton's initiatives were a disaster, and may have emboldened Arafat to think that a terror offensive would bring Israel to its knees while the United States continued pressuring it to give in on territory, including Jerusalem.