[manny613]

"The U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation ...."

Let's set the clock back to 1979 and the Iranian "embarrasment".
I wonder who the president was then?

Someone should stick to building houses and talking to Playboy.

[guinnessman]

Years ago, I read a book called "Breaking with Moscow" by Arkady Chevchenko, who was the highest ranking Soviet ever to defect to the U.S. (he and Anatoly Dobrynin were the top advisors to Andrei Gromyko)

In his book, he mentions a meeting that Gromyko had with Jimmy Carter in 1977. Afterwards, he asked Gromyko how the meeting went. Gromyko scowled, "Read the cable!" Then he smiled and said, "He thinks that we're just like another Western democracy. I think in the end, we're going to get him to agree to a lot of things that we want."