The Bush family "fixer" is back

Remember the post-election period in 2000? Remember the name that kept cropping up during the Supreme Court-coup period? James Baker ("whose law firm has long represented some of the U.S.'s biggest oil companies"). While the mainstream media likes to give Karl Rove the credit for putting the Bush in the White House despite the fact that he lost the 2000 election (and perhaps in 2004 as well) the credit really belongs to James Baker.
Well he's back. And this time he's running the Middle East strategy for the administration. Perhaps we can look forward to a steel-cage match between the Dick and the Fixer.
Checkout this report from IPS:

"While his handlers worked assiduously Tuesday to ensure that U.S. President George W. Bush did not run into his Iranian nemesis, Mahmood Ahmedinejad, in the corridors of the U.N., a legendary fixer for the Bush family announced that the White House had cleared him to meet with a 'high representative' of Tehran's government.

"Former Secretary of State James Baker, who co-chairs a bipartisan, Congressionally appointed task force called the Iraq Study Group (ISG), said that the timing of the meeting with that representative, whom he declined to name, had yet to be arranged but that permission for such a meeting to take place has been granted.

"'I'm fairly confident that we will meet with a high representative of the (Iranian) government,' he said at a press conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), one of several think tanks, including the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the Centre for the Study of the Presidency, and Baker's own Houston-based Institute for Public Policy, that are supporting the Study Group's work.

"Such a meeting would no doubt feed speculation here that Baker, a consummate realist who reportedly has been privately critical of the administration's Middle East policies, could help tilt the balance of power within the administration in favour of fellow-realists, centred in the State Department. They generally support greater flexibility in dealing with perceived U.S. foes in the region, and against right-wing hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney who have steadfastly opposed engagement with both Iran and Syria."