Operation Desert Bungle

According to David Crist's book, "The Twilight War", not only was Iran willing to cooperate with the U.S. after 9/11, they were practically desperate to. a) Their economy was in a shamble and they much needed to trade with us. b) Most of the Iranians were just as aghast as we were at the scope of the crime that al Qaeda had inflicted, and literally tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets in a candle-light vigil in support of the West. And c) we actually shared a lot of the same miserable enemies; al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban (the Iranians always supported the Northern Alliance and were exceedingly pissed at Afghanistan over the drug issue).......................................................................................And it didn't appear to be just window-dressing, either, folks. a) Iran had made is perfectly clear (in lower level talks with Ryan Crocker that by most accounts were apparently making progress) that they were fully prepared to support American actions in Afghanistan to the tune of even allowing us to use their air-fields and ports. b) They also fully supported the concepts of Afghan elections and even a renunciation of terrorism (Antiwar.com's Scott Horton has even claimed that they would have been willing to ditch Hamas and Hezbollah). And c) They actually contributed more to the early reconstruction funding in Afghanistan than we did......................................................................................Look, I'm not saying here that the Iranians would have been perfect partners by a long shot (and, yeah, they may have ultimately stabbed us in the back). But the fact that President Bush failed so miserably to see the natural divisions between these various factions (he apparently didn't even know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite) is yet another example of the dude's ham-handedness, in my opinion.......................................................................................P.S. It's also another example of him not listening to the saner folks in his administration; Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Ryan Crocker, Flynt Leverett, etc. (hell, I even think that Codi Rice was in this camp for a while) and caving to the neocons (Wolfowitz, Feith, Luti, Boton, etc.).