Bush Administration bargaining with terrorists?

If the Al-Hayat newspaper and ABC News are right in their reporting, then this says a whole lot about the Administration's reversal of policy towards terrorists.  ABC News' The Blotter had an entry today about a story that appeared in Al-Hayat, a pan-Arab newspaper, about the real reason why the Fox News reporters were released from their Gaza captors.

Originally, the traditional media reported that the reporters made an agreement with their captors to convert to Islam, which led to their release.  But as Hoda Osman of The Blotter writes, the Bush Administration negotiated with the terrorist group in Gaza.  Soon after, the Fox News employees were released:

The paper quotes "informed sources close to the mediations" assaying that the U.S. secretly negotiated with the group through leadersof "the Palestinian popular resistance committees."

Last week, the previously unknown group calling itself "The HolyJihad Brigades" issued a statement demanding the release of all Muslimsheld in U.S. prisons in return for the release of the two journalists.In fact, the paper reports that the public demand was not serious andthat the group's "real demands" were that the U.S. press Israel toreopen the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Palestine and ceasethe shelling of "Palestinian activists'" residences.

According to the report, the mediators contacted a representative ofa European country who in turn contacted U.S. and British diplomats. The paper's sources said in the report that members of a senior FBIdelegation, who had arrived in the area a few days earlier, were alsoinvolved in the negotiations.

The announcement that the two journalists had converted to Islam asa reason for their release was only a camouflage to conceal the factthat the U.S. had agreed to the hostage-takers' demands, according tothe sources cited in the article. A few days ago the Rafah crossing wasreopened for a few hours daily, and the Israeli forces stopped shellingresidences of activists in the past few days, noted the paper'ssources.

When asked for a response by ABCNews.com, a State Departmentspokesperson refused to comment on the report in al Hayat. Thedepartment's stated policy has been that the United States does notnegotiate with terrorists.

First of all, this is what you call foreign policy realism.  We had trained diplomats, not Bush Administration rhetoric, controlling the talks to ensure the release of the reporters.  In other words, hardly anyone would object to back-channel negotiations with this group if it meant that, one, the reporters could go free, and two, it would not endanger our national security in any way.

But what I find intriguing is why the Administration let these secret negotiations take place.  If it went public that the White House negotiated with terrorists, then the Administration would look bad heading into November.  It would go against Bush's pledge over the last five years to never under any circumstance engage in dialogue with the enemy.  What this event proves is that sometimes engagement is much more effective in achieving an objective than polarized idealism.

Lastly, we know that if this sequence of events happened while Clinton was in office, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and the entire right-wing noise machine would be calling him a traitor -- even though that in situations like this one, engagement can save lives.

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Other sites blogging about this issue: Ben's Blog, Mideasttruth, The Blotter, Mundo en mi opinion.