A Horribly Familiar Cycle

"At least 19 Afghan workers, including a 12-year-old boy, were killed in the blast, as were a South Korean soldier, an American soldier, an American civilian contractor and the bomber, the military said in a statement."

As one reader noted in my Live Online discussion yesterday, neither the vice president, in his comments on the attack, nor any of his staff have apparently expressed condolences nor acknowledged the loss of life in any way.

Diplomacy Watch

Helene Cooper writes in the New York Times: "In the span of just two weeks, the United States has agreed to hold high-level contacts with Iran and Syria, and to start down the path toward formal diplomatic recognition of North Korea."

By contrast: "As recently as Jan. 12, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated what has been a constant of Bush foreign policy: a refusal to bestow on Iran, Syria and North Korea the legitimacy of diplomatic engagement as long as they refuse to bend on disputed issues.

"'That's not diplomacy,' Ms. Rice said before a Senate panel, in defending the administration's stand on Iran and Syria. 'That's extortion.'

"Administration officials insisted Wednesday that the new overtures, including an agreement to join Iran and Syria in talks on Iraq, did not mean there had been a change in policy. 'There is no crack,' the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said. 'A number of people have been characterizing U.S. participation in a regional meeting as a change in policy; it is nothing of the sort.'

"But foreign policy experts, administration critics on Capitol Hill and former diplomats disagreed, saying the administration appeared to have recognized the extent to which it had tied its own hands by insisting on talking only to friends. Even Ms. Rice had called the opening to Tehran and Damascus a 'diplomatic initiative.'"

Snow was quite the contortionist on this issue at yesterday's briefing, definitively asserting that the Bush administration is both taking the diplomatic route -- and isn't:

"Q Why are you so defensive about going the diplomatic route?

" MR. SNOW: We're not. As a matter of fact, we've been going the diplomatic route all along. We're not being defensive. What we're trying to do is clarify. . . . "

And later:

" Q I don't understand what the problem is, why you're going so far out of your way to say, what we're doing now shouldn't be interpreted as reaching out diplomatically to Iran and Syria.