Bush: Iran letter doesn't answer nuclear question

This is off Yahoo News:

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week did not answer the key question of when Tehran would abandon its nuclear program.

"It looks like it did not answer the main question that the world is asking and that is, 'When will you get rid of your nuclear program?'," Bush said in his first public comment on the letter.

Bush was speaking in an interview with Florida newspapers that was posted on the St. Petersburg Times Web site.

"Britain, France, Germany - coupled with the United States and Russia and China have all agreed that the Iranians should not have a weapon or the capacity to make a weapon," Bush said. "There is a universal agreement toward that goal and the letter didn't address that question," he said.

Ahmadinejad's 18-page letter was the first publicly announced communication from an Iranian president to a U.S. president since the break between the two countries in 1979 after Iran's revolution.

It discussed alleged American foreign policy misdeeds and defended scientific research as a basic right of nations.

Bush you frickin twit--it doesn't matter whether Ahmadinejad answered or addressed the nuclear question in his letter. The main point here is that he directly sent you a letter, opening a possible dialog with the United States to resolve the issues and disputes between the U.S. and Iran. The issues within that letter were the issues that Ahmadinejad wanted to address--of course Ahmadinejad doesn't want to address the issues of Iran's nuclear program, any more than you don't want to address the issues of secret East European prisons, illegal domestic spying, or the use of torture on Muslim prisoners. With this letter, you had an opening to where you could have had a U.S. diplomat sit down across from the table of an Iranian diplomat, and they both start talking about all the issues and disputes between both countries. That is what diplomacy is all about.

Of course, such diplomatic negotiations would screw up your military timetable for attacking Iran....