Senator Obama is trying to make this into a debate between his reasonable willingness to talk with adversaries on the one hand, and the approach of Senator McCain or the Bush administration on the other being a bunch of unilateralist cowboys who never talk to anybody. That’s not the dispute at all. Every negotiation is an individual decision, whether it’s in our interest to talk or not to talk. And, I think, here’s the key point: Negotiation is not a policy. It's a technique. It's something you use when it's to your advantage, and something that you don't use when it's not to your advantage.

— John R. Bolton Attributed

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