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This is just perfect. Watch as Zbigniew Brzezinski smacks down the doltish Joe Scarborough on MSNBC:

Zbig to Joe: "You have a such stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on it's almost embarrassing to listen to you."

Brzezinski keeps referring to the Taba Summit, about which Joe knows nothing - absolutely nothing! All he needs to do is visit wikipedia, and he'll find out the following:

The summit took place against the backdrop of the failed Camp David 2000 Summit between Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak and the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and a Palestinian Intifada that commenced against Israel.

The Israelis and Palestinians had first negotiated in Washington DC under President Bill Clinton from December 19 to December 23, 2000. The Israelis under Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and the prime minister's bureau chief Gilad Sher. President Clinton presented bridging proposals. Following a meeting in Cairo, Egypt between Ben-Ami and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, the talks were then moved to Taba from January 21 to January 27, 2001.

There is a summary of what happened at this summit to which Zbig keeps referring, and it's covered at that Wikipedia page, too.

The final conclusion is not cut and dry as the Western press wants to portray it. That is, all we hear is that Arafat walked away from an agreement after being given everything he wanted. It's just not true, as evidenced by a final communique released at the end of the Taba Summit:

"The Taba negotiation began on Sunday evening, January 21, and ended on Saturday afternoon, January 27 [2001]. At the closing press conference, the parties issued this joint statement: 'The sides declare that they have never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of negotiations following the Israeli election'."

Most likely what happened is that time ran out and both sides gave up. From that Wiki page:

The breakdown is often attributed to the political circumstances posed by Israeli elections and changeover in leadership in the United States:[9] They had run out of political time. They couldn't conclude an agreement with Clinton now out of office and Barak standing for reelection in two weeks. "We made progress, substantial progress. We are closer than ever to the possibility of striking a final deal," said Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's negotiator. Saeb Erekat, Palestinian chief negotiator, said, "My heart aches because I know we were so close. We need six more weeks to conclude the drafting of the agreement."

With the recent renewed bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, we must be careful not to rewrite history. It's pretty clear, though, that, as Zbig says to Joe, Condi Rice flew to the mideast on 16 different occasions and has achieved absolutely nothing. Remember: this is the same Condi Rice who didn't know that Hamas had just won the elections over Fatah!

Ms. Rice, who had heralded the election as a symbol of the new stirrings of democracy in the Middle East, was so blindsided by the victory that she was startled when she saw a crawl of words on her television screen while exercising on her elliptical trainer the morning after the election: "In wake of Hamas victory, Palestinian cabinet resigns."

"I thought, 'Well, that's not right,'" Ms. Rice recalled. When the crawl continued, she got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department.

"I said, 'What happened in the Palestinian elections?'" Ms. Rice recalled. "And they said, 'Oh, Hamas won.' And I thought, 'Oh my goodness, Hamas won?'"

That quote is one of the most stunning of all the stunning quotes over the past eight years!

Bush came into power not really caring about peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and he leaves office with no progress whatsoever in resolving the continued conflict in Israel. It's very sad, indeed.

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