The opening paragraph of Ms. Rubin’s latest essay, On an Iran deal, reports of concessions galore  is carefully framed as imaginative reconstruction/speculation as the in order too of  placing blame on the French, for leaks from the P5+1 negotiations: one can see that the valuable lesson from her column on Anders Behring Breivik has to some extent chastened our writer, almost! This is quickly followed by Wall Street Journal ‘report’ based on ‘say people close to the negotiations’ and ‘these people say’, a Murdoch publication unfriendly to President Obama?  The next quote is from David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, his quote appears to buttress Rubin’s position, but here is a telling quote from 2009 from his organization regarding Iran:

A June 2009 posting on ISIS argued that “we do know that a lasting, military solution to Iran’s nuclear program is not realistic. This leaves diplomacy as the best route to bring about a suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, regardless of who holds Iran’s presidency.”^[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Science_and_International_Security

Then comes an Associated Press report based on ‘officials have told The Associated Press.’ More speculation from anonymous sources. And then a quote from an e mail from the Israel Project, in essence an American public relations firm i.e. Israeli apologists. The essay continues in this vein until it’s end, with the caveat that brevity is not Ms. Rubin’s strong point: as if a torrent of words will make up for the utterly partisan character of her hectoring essay. This phrase captures the letter and spirit of her essay, ‘ the president’s cockeyed scheme of appeasement.’

I’ve just finished reading The Georgetown Set by Gregg Herken, although it reads more like a compendium of historically sophisticated gossip, one comes to the realization that the Old Cold Warriors, like the Alsop brothers and the Bundy brothers among others: the Wasp Ascendency, believed that the Soviets were men, always men, who were incapable of rational thought, but animated politically by ideological fixations rather than a rationalist apprehension of events allied to self-interest. Ms. Rubin shares that nihilist ethical/political belief with her policy precursors.

Political Realist