Tariq Aziz? This Is a Joke, Right?

There are reports that the U.S. has cut a deal with Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, so he can negotiate with the Sunni insurgents:

According to the Iraqi newspaper Al- Quds al-Arabi, James Baker, the Bush family's Mr. Fixit, recently met with one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers in Amman, Jordan, and told him that the former deputy prime minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, would be released from detention by December in order to negotiate with the US on behalf of factions of the Iraqi resistance movement still controlled by old Ba'ath Party leaders. Sources in Jordan tell me that the first stage of such negotiations has indeed already taken place. Two weeks ago, Aziz was whisked from his jail cell and, along with other representatives of Iraq's Sunni Resistance, taken for three days' of secret discussions in Amman with senior US officials... Aziz and his colleagues are currently discussing America's proposals with the divisional resistance leadership, whose response and counter-offers they will present to Washington early next month....

The view in Washington is that Al-Maliki's usefulness has ended, and a political coup is now underway to oust him and reorganize his regime along lines more amenable to a revival of America's old bias toward Sunni Arabs. In the Situation Room, the situation always has room for change, and two opinions are better than one even when they're mutually contradictory.

Three years, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives, and now, we're going to work with ex-Ba'athists? Weren't these guys the evildoers? Can we finally admit that the 'grownups' have no idea at all what they are doing? We have no plan. Bring the troops home. Start it now.