I suppose we should start treating the North Korean "promises" as money in the bank too. Not for nothing did French president Sarkozy say to Obama re Iran: "we live in the real world, not a virtual world".

As much as I wish what Greenwald writes were true, it is I suspect a rather extreme case of naive wishful thinking.

What else is there to say?

When we stop acting like belligerent and spoiled infants, then we can have reaosnable and civil conversations with other people.

Who knew?

Good point, Glenn, and well made.

Well go figure.

Suppose you have some medium-sized radio telescopes located in various parts of the world in such a way that they can see a common source (say a region of our galaxy, or whatever). Suppose that they want to achieve a common goal of combining their received signals to gain better resolution in looking at the source. Then a really big radio telescope, Arecibo in this case, agrees to join in when it can. (Limitations in where it can point do restrict it some.) With appropriate signal processing, adding just one powerful instrument with great sensitivity to the system effectively improves the quality of the signals from the smaller ones. That is, they operate better together, and the improvement of the results surprises those who have not thought about it carefully.

Apparently international relations can work in a similar way.

Imagine what happens when the larger instrument purposely looks the wrong way.

was not aware of what the exact numbers were, but your's was the first time in memory that the degree of enrichment was noted and why the difference of enrichment matters in the intended use of the material

As Gareth Porter documented in detail, Bush actively denied overtures from Iran in 2003 which would have included stopping nuclear development, acknowledgment of Israel and de-funding terrorists. Instead, Bush reprimanded the Swiss diplomat who relayed the proposal:

Iran's historic proposal for a broad diplomatic agreement should have prompted high-level discussions over the details of an American response. In fact, however, the issue was quickly closed to further discussion. Leverett believes the document was a "respectable effort" to provide a basis for negotiations. Yet he recalls that there was no interagency meeting to discuss it. "The State Department knew it had no chance at the interagency level of arguing the case for it successfully," he says. "They weren't going to waste Powell's rapidly diminishing capital on something that unlikely."

The outcome of discussion among the principals -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell -- was that State was instructed to ignore the proposal and to reprimand Guldimann for having passed it on. "It was literally a few days," Leverett recalls, between the arrival of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of the message of displeasure with the Swiss ambassador.

One other point that I find interesting is that when Obama made his "revelation" about the Qom facility at the G20 meeting, he did this with France and Germany, two countries that did not participate in the Iraq misadventure. Was that a signal to Iran that this time war was not a pre-ordained outcome? If so, Obama is owed a bit of respect for bucking the overwhelming push to war from inside the Beltway. I actually hold out some hope that we might avoid war on this one.

Two things struck me about it (aside from the predictable Obama is a neophyte claptrap).

1.) He doesn't actually know the definition of appeasement. He produces a Sarkozy quote - "“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.” - which has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to appeasement (since when does an offer of dialogue = appeasement), and then rambles on about it.

2.) Why all the France-love? 5 years ago Krauthammer was adament that "the French" were the root of all obstructionism (see link below), yet now Obama is supposed to dutifully sing to Sarkozy's tune?

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,661053,00.html

You could almost say he's suffering from some sort of derangement syndrome.

I think the internet has compelled all world players to suddenly realize that anyone with a computer can corroborate or find flaws in reason and fact. Some of these players wouldn't be acting all adult if that wasn't true. I'm talking about the Americans (us) being the dickheads, here.

The reichwing Israeli Firsters (here and abroad) hate Carter because he's been right most of the time and their nuclear weapons are a fact from his lips to my ears. One hundred and fifty of them. Israel's fanatical zealots are jihadists of a different mother, that's all. I hope Barack knows that Iran won't be the cake walk that Iraq was and who knows, just like the Russians have a doomsday device (to launch nuclear weapons after their total destruction to ensure MAD), maybe Iran has already booby trapped and set nuclear devices for maximum revenge upon trespass. I hope to hell they do. I hear the U.S. can be a terrible tyrant.

I suppose we should start treating the North Korean "promises" as money in the bank too.

Different country, different conditions, different situation entirely. You'd do better comparing apples to mangos.

Not for nothing did French president Sarkozy say to Obama re Iran: "we live in the real world, not a virtual world".

Good advice, except I personally fail to see the relevance here.

As much as I wish what Greenwald writes were true, it is I suspect a rather extreme case of naive wishful thinking.

As I ask above, what are we being "naive" about? Glenn states from the outset this is just a tentative agreement; the fine grain details still need to be hammered out, obviously, and there's no guarantee one side or the other won't do something monumentally stupid in the interim.

Perhaps you should read Professor Cole's post concerning the relevant facts on Iran (Glenn helpfully links to it) before declaring us guilty of "wishful thinking". Just a small suggestion, as I'm trying hard to give you the benefit of the doubt here.