Condi has the Bush Touch, everything she involves herself in turns to shit.

Arab leaders were deeply skeptical of the U.S. plan for Iraq, a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to sell it to them. Kuwait’s emir told Rice that America should work with Iran and Syria, officials said — something U.S. President George W. Bush has rejected.

The Bush administration plans to send U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns on another Mideast shuttle to offer more details in an effort to persuade Arab leaders who are increasingly fearful over Iraq, a U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

Meeting with Rice on Tuesday in Kuwait, eight Arab foreign ministers raised tough questions about Bush’s new strategy.

[snip]

Many in the media depicted Rice’s visit as a failure. “The whole jet-setting trip turned out to be yet another stage-managed, futile diplomatic exercise … In effect, Rice returns to Washington empty handed with a lot of false promises rather than optimism,” the Doha, Qatar-based Peninsula newspaper wrote in editorial.

Jordanian analyst Labib Kamhawi said that besides their doubts over the plan itself, Arab leaders had a difficult time throwing support behind it “when there has been a total failure in Iraq and the Palestinian territories with no attempt to soften the anger that is seething in the Arab and Muslim countries.”

The emir of Kuwait was surprised that the Bush plan excludes Iran and Syrian from contacts on Iraq.

It is important to have a “dialogue with Syria, in particular, and with Iran in the interest of Gulf security in general,” Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Mohammed Al Sabah quoted the emir as telling Rice.

[snip]

Saudi columnist Dawoud al-Shriyan underlined Rice should take the calls seriously.

“Every time the Americans are in trouble in Iraq, they remember that Arabs have a cause named Palestine. Therefore, they float some statements to create the impression that they continue their efforts in the peace process,” he wrote in the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper Wednesday.

-Holden