Ok.  We have a presidential election year.  We have what has been a deeply unpopular war going on in Iraq.  We have money going out from the Bush Administration to people who in different circumstances might be referred to as--take your pick--thugs, mercenaries, or terrorists to lay off of killing people for the time being.  Like, just speculating, but perhaps through early-November or so, although terms not publicly disclosed so far as I know.

Reagan used to say our policy is not to negotiate with terrorists. 

Has the current Administration simply modernized and updated the policy?  So that now the pesky, sometimes nettlesome talking or negotiations stage is skipped?  And that this government proceeds directly past "GO" and straight to the bribery option?  

The better to try to keep the public from thinking about Iraq so much this year and, it does, leave it feeling things are not going so badly there after all?

But that can't be the whole story.  Nah.  The Bush Administration wouldn't do *that*, would it? 

Surely the situation must be more complicated than that?  What am I missing?