Condoleezza Rice rejected Iran's 2003 offer to create a dialogue.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice misled the U.S. Congress when she said last week that she had not seen a 2003 Iranian proposal for talks with the United States, a former senior government official said on Wednesday.

Flynt Leverett, who worked on the National Security Council when it was headed by Rice, likened the proposal to the 1972 U.S. opening to China. He said he was confident it was seen by Rice and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell but "the administration rejected the overture."
Speaking at a conference on Capitol Hill, Leverett said "this was a serious proposal, a serious effort" by

Iran to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.

"The Bush administration up to and including Secretary Rice is misleading Congress and the American public about the Iran proposal," he said.

So the only two choices available are that Rice and the administration are incompetent idiots who did not respond appropriately to Iran's offer to begin negotiations, or that they purposefully refused to cooperate in an effort to paint Iran as unreasonable and dangerous.

And why would they want to label Iran as dangerous? Because Americans do not respond well when you bomb innocent people.

This has happened before, in almost exactly the same way. Do you remember Saddam?

In December 2002, a representative of the head of Iraqi Intelligence, Gen. Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti, contacted former CIA counterterrorism head Vincent Cannistraro, stating that Saddam "knew there was a campaign to link him to September 11 and prove he had weapons of mass destruction." Cannistrano further added that "the Iraqis were prepared to satisfy these concerns. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it." Cannistrano stated that the offers made were all "killed" by the Bush administration because they allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power - an outcome viewed as unacceptable.

For the Bush administration to continue to say that they are not gearing up to attack Iran, is to say that they consider us to ignorant to put two and two together. They are mistaken.