Report: U.S. in secret talks with Iraq insurgents

From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported today, citing Pentagon and other sources.

The Bush administration has said it would not negotiate with Iraqi fighters and there is no authorized dialogue but the U.S. is having "back-channel" communications with certain insurgents, unidentified Washington and Iraqi sources told the magazine.

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My bet is that the White House will try to spin this as something along the lines of "Iraq's new democracy has scared the insurgents into cooperating." However, these negotiations were predicted over six weeks ago by British journalist Robert Fisk during a Democracy Now interview: Fisk's point of view is that the utter chaos wreaked by insurgents would scare the US into cooperating; it is now clear that the Pentagon knows we cannot win this war. If Fisk's run of successful prognostication continues, the US will soon pull out, leaving the insurgents in power. What this might mean for Iraq's newly elected government, I really can't say.

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