Another opinion worth mentioning is that Obama was using sweet-talk because he knows he can't win militarily.

CNN: Obama draws questions, praise from Muslims

The conservative critique of Mr Obama is that he is Jimmy Carter redux: a woolly idealist who thinks he can sweet-talk bad guys into behaving.

ECONOMIST: Barack Obama's foreign policy

The anti-anti-missile crowd is, moreover, trying to sweet-talk the Kremlin into dropping its hysterical objections to limited missile defenses in Europe by making them dependent on Russian systems.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Missile defense misjudgment

He knew how the business worked and, as handsome as the Bollywood idols he sometimes cast in his pictures, he could sweet-talk a budget out of the hardest financial hearts.

ECONOMIST: Obituary: Ismail Merchant | The

And with a more trusted and cable-savvy management, the broadband part should also soon get into its stride and be in a stronger position to sweet-talk other operators into opening their networks for cable telephony.

ECONOMIST: Ma Bell does the splits | The

The tricky Robosapien folks chose not to display some of their hottest bots at CES Unveiled -- probably because they won't be released in the US for the forseeable future -- but we managed to sweet talk them into hooking us up with some images and a few deets about this unannounced swag.

ENGADGET: WowWee: snakes, dragonflies, and bears -- oh my!