We had to evacuate the frigging Brookings Institution today because of a fire drill but as a result I got to holler at Lakhdar Brahimi, one of the world’s most distinguished troubleshooting diplomats, about Afghanistan and the prospect of talking with the Taliban. It was cold out. But Brahimi spit fire. Washington Independent newness:

 “We have to ask [ourselves?] what to do with them,” said Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian diplomat who served as the United Nation’s chief envoy to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2004, referring to the Taliban, outside Washington’s Brookings Institution think tank on Thursday morning. “They are not to be wished away.”

Kind of oblique, kind of diplomatic. But I am your decoder ring.