"The report doesn't provide cover for anything other than an utter reversal of direction and a repudiation of, among other people, the Secretary of State. Ms. Rice would have to resign if this report's advice were taken."

One thing that the main posters here seem to miss time and again, this is a new ball game. Responsibility and accountability while good slogans on the campaign trail play NO role in the governing philosophy. Follow the party line, take whatever you can get on the way, and retire to the French Riviera. If you're caught you either get cover if you are high enough on the food chain or get tossed to the wolves to cover for the big boys. This is how gangs operate; it is how one-party cynical governments operate. The Russian government under the Communists operated this way. You talk of having to resign. Actually everything Powell said he stood for and he believed was trashed by this government; but he had to be FIRED. The reports were Powell resigned when they made it clear they had enough of him not the reverse. What a lowlife without principles Colin Powell is; and he is frequently held up as a "pricipled" former member of this government. After Katrina were there "resignations"? I might have missed them. Or resignations for Abu Ghraib? The corruption from the top permeates all the way down. Condoleeza Rice, a phony academic who rose to power and prominence with the most trite and sell-able anti-Communist themes in her thesis, will never resign on principle.

Note, however, that what got Colin Powell fired was to continue to push for a conservative-realist line against the perposterous neocon line that dominated the administration, while what got Brownie fired was being incompetent at running his agency in a way that left W's posterior exposed.

We should take the side of the Kurds and give them their own state.

J. McCutchen

That's an excellent point Reed which amplifies and clarifies Baker's admonition that the ISG's recs are not a "fruit salad" but rather are integrated to achieve broade objectives.

However, Ivo's fundamental criticism trumps all. The failure analysis does not justify the positivistic thrust of the 79 proposals.

Returning the omlet to the egg shells happens only on film

In a remarkable display of recklessness laced with naiveté, President Bush imagined that he could lift the lid on that box and rearrange the contents, liberating Iraq and then remaking it in our own image. Alas, the president succeeded only in unleashing furies that have long since escaped his control.
To imagine at this late date that we retain any ability to tame those furies is nonsense.

Bacevich

The White House prefers Shiites? That assumes that the GWB both knows and cares enough to have such a preference. There is simply no evidence that he does. None. Anywhere. Ever.

Bush believes in "democracy," and thinks it means that people get to vote. That's it. His thinking goes no deeper.

Bush doesn't understand culture. He assumes that anyone who doesn't acknowledge that our ways are superior to everyone else's are being petulant.

Bush doesn't understand ethnicity. He thinks it's great to have your own food and music (as long as he doesn't have to partake in them), but that that's the start and end of real differences between people. He honestly believes that everyone on earth is just like us, that everyone wants the same things we want the same ways we want them.

Bush's upset with Iraqis is because they haven't acknowledged that they really, truly, deep-down want to be just like us. Even George Will understands how moronic this guy is:

"Where's the leader?" Bush, according to Woodward, has exclaimed in dismay about the Iraqi government's dithering. "Where's George Washington? Where's Thomas Jefferson? Where's John Adams, for crying out loud?" For a president to ask that question about Iraq, that tribal stew, is enough to cause one to ask it about the United States

Writing that the White House prefers Shiites to Sunnis and Kurds assumes that Bush can tell the difference. I'm betting the truth is: "They all look the same to me."

A Lieutenant who served two tours in Iraq told me this:

The only solution to Iraq is the Roman solution. No nation on earth can impose that solution today, so we're not going to solve anything with or without more troops.

Anti-imperialism, anyone?

The imperialists wanted to invade Iraq and establish permanent bases. A weak Iraqi government was a means to an end, since a strong Iraq would ask the U.S. to leave, defeating the imperial purpose.

Baker and the ISG is not willing to renounce Empire, and so is not willing to commit to no permanent bases, and withdrawal on a fixed schedule.

I think the new Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee agrees with Baker-Hamilton, that siding with the Sunnis is the best move

How else can we defeat the Shiites in al Qaida?

---------

It's hardly suprising that Baker wants to ally with the Saudis. He's their lawyer, for christsakes. What is fascinating to me are the Shiite/Sunni dynamics at play throughout the region. The Bush Administration's "enemy" is Iran, yet America's overwhelming support of Iraqi Shiites only strengthens Iran. Likewise, our "ally" is Saudi Arabia, yet they are funding the Sunni insurgency - our enemy in Iraq. (For all the talk about Syria (overwhelmingly Sunni), it is clearly the Saudis who are funding most of the insurgency.)

Over at WaPo, old neocon friend Jim Hoagland is downright giddy about the possibility of a larger Sunni-Shiite war spreading throughout the Middle East.  I expect this to be the new "realist" CW among neocons...that Iraq is the start of a great and terrible Sunni-Shiite war in the Middle East that will be brutal, but...you know...might "reshape" things in a positive way. The more things change, the more they stay the same...for neocons at least.

While it is certainly possible that Iraq will spread into a regional conflaguration, my BS-detectors tell me this is just another way for neocons to "up the ante"; to convince us all that leaving Iraq would be inviting Armageddon. We know, however, that the Royal Saudis are rational actors will little interest in a shooting war with Iran.  Likewise, the Iranian Mullahs are already preparing to clip Ahmadinejad's wing, and are just as interested in maintaining their hold over regional wealth and power as the Saudis.   The danger of a Middle East meltdown is always there, but most of these countries would surely prefer to fund a proxy war between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites than get personally involved.

(The irony, of course, is that the Saudis have to deal with a much more radicalized population than the Iranian Mullahs.  After all, Hezbollah, for all its terrorism, actually wants to participate in politics.  Contrast this to the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia, for whom it is Sharia/Jihad or bust.  Your average city-dwelling Iranian is a hell of a lot friendlier to the West than your average Saudi.)

The Honorable incoming House intelligence committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) response to the question above points up the failure of the American election and education system for politicians. The country cannot move forward with leaders who know little or nothing about the world, different cultures, religions, or history.

What this country needs is a NPLB policy.

A No-Politician-Left-Behind education and testing system, with mandatory testing of all persons running for Congress or President. The tests could be developed by experienced educators in the fields of foreign affairs, geography, history, philosophy etc.

The tests would be given three months before each election. The results of each politicians test scores would be mandatory on all political advertisements until election day.

Bront01, Reyes might struggle on the facts and figures, but I have a feeling he would dominate the Truthiness section...

J. McCutchen

AP reports that Sunnis, generally, reacted favorably to the ISG report but then there's Bush's new best friend Abdul al-Hakim, here to prove Reed's point:

The report includes inaccurate information that's based on dishonest sources," said Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a top Shiite politician. He did not elaborate, but also rejected the report's linkage between Iraq and a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict AP

Why?

Not because Iran doens't favor this but because the linkange is the price of admission to the table for Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan...

The road to peace in Jerusalem and Baghdad lies through Jerusalem....

Raprochement with Iran and a meaningful peace offensive including pressure on Israel cannot be seperated from the whole..the cherries on the fruit salad cannot be picked while leaving the lemons and grapefruit to the garbage disposal

Timetable
Regional Approach
national reconcillation....

Those are the keys to managing the consequences of failure.

Won't happen,,,three legged stools require 3 legs to stand.

Uh, Squeaky, that is some interesting dialog. What is it? Who said it? Link, please.

The tragic thing is that he even had a 50% chance of being right on a wild guess.

The U.S. would have a harder time standing by in the event of a Turkish incursion under such circumstances

As bad as things in Iraq are, as my brother says, things can always get worse. So now we will have the choice of fighting the Kurds and completely exploding the whole situation in the entire country, or what's left of it, or siding against a NATO member nation?

Heckuva job, Bushie. Again.

I'm reminded of an old joke:  Why do politicians have one more brain cell than horses?  So they don't poop during parades.

I'm reminded of an old saying: There are more horses asses in the world than there are horses.

Tom

The way the bullseye borders on the target, the way Columbus borders on Ohio, the way the pitcher's mound borders on a baseball diamond ...

... on second thought, just use that last. Its the only one that Resident Bush is likely to work out the meaning of.

BTW, are you sure they aren't lines from a Cole Porter song?

Someone from Le Monde, in France, used the phrase "knight errantry" (and the destruction of even that mythology) in relation to America's Bush-League Crusade in Iraq. Meditating on that for a few moments this morning led to:

http://themisfortuneteller.blogspot.com/2006/12/dumb-peyote.html

From the "Best and the Brightest" to the "Worst and the Dullest" all in a single generation. I have a fairly decent memory and something of an imagination, but even I don't want to think of what comes next.

The gig is up. In the adjoining countries there are 200 million people, all of whom are now at risk of joining Iraq's 27 million in all out Sunni/Shiite war.

Sounds to me like such an end result could be Good 4 A Merica. In the event whether or not that's what happens is up to them and not up to us.

That's right Doug. Our best and brightest got caught screwing the pooch, and now we're stuck either raising the mutant offspring or strangling them (and the pups) in the dark of night.

But what could we expect from a generation that believes government is the root of all evil. Should we have expected these Hobbesian dogs unleashed from hell? Indeed, what else could we expect from Republicans?

We have lost the war on terror, for three reasons:

1. Very simply, it worked. Americans were terrorized by 9/11. Terrorized into doing stupid things for stupid reasons expecting fairy tale results. That's how terrorism is supposed to work and this time it worked better than it's ever worked before. So much for the myth of the great American character. Look back on the Congressional hearings. Look at the faces of the Senators, the Generals, the Secretaries, the Deputies, and the deputies to the Deputies, and tell me again how you know a rational mind from a traumatised mind.
   
2. Those struggling against the West have out flanked our best and brightest war mongers. They've evolved beyond mere acts of terror, leaving our leaders standing in the dark with their dicks in their hands waiting to get their money's worth, barely aware of the fading sounds of high heels slipping away around the cornor.  Watch General Abizaid when he appears next before Congress. Watch him closely. The man is utterly clueless that he now faces a real enemy that can smell his blood and lays real plans to taste it before the next year is gone.
   
3. One of the shortcomings of capitalism-as-religion is that the gospel "sales cure all ills" can obliterate a congregation's ability to envision the future beyond the next quarterly report. But al Zahawiri and bin Laden spent 20 years traveling to 9/11, learning, adjusting, and maturing their strategy. And unlike Ford Motor's "strategy" over the same period, theirs became reality-based. They plotted to drag the "far enemy" into an unwinable Asian war to undermine the legitimacy of their "near enemies". Their struggle, like Pope Benedict's, is against secular humanism. But unlike our dottering old holiness, they know that funerals by the thousands, tragic funerals of war, will bring people back into the shelter of "old time religion" faster than the smells and bells of ancient ritual.

In the autumn of 2001 people wandered the streets of New York City, dazed and unrooted, shaking their heads and wailing, "Why do they hate us?" Perhaps we should have taken the time, and character, to have tried to answere that honest question before rushing off to teach the world a thing or two. Instead we reacted exactly as al Zahawiri predicted we would, as Michael Richards put it, "That's what happens when you interrupt the white man".

At this point Al Qaeda is probably no more a major player on the world stage than George Bush is. The war of the twenty-first century has passed both by and nothing they say or do will have any lasting effect on the course of events. At this point we are reduced to hoping we can pick sides in the Moslem world, that somehow we can back either the Sunnis or the Shiites and inspire a sectarian war so they will kill more of each other than they kill of us. That Doug is the strategy of a defeated and cowardly nation in retreat. And it wont work for long, but, if we are lucky it will work just long enough to get our troops out of the Persian Gulf without staggering losses.

I get what you're saying, but what Constitutional crisis did Clinton foment?

His impeachment, in my opinion, created a Constitutional crisis in that it has hamstrung the process for when it really is appropriate! Now nobody wants to be accused of a pay-back, when this president has clearly committed high crimes and misdemeanors, if not felonies!

Jan Knaus

J. McCutchen

From Grave and Gathering to Grave and Deteriortating

It has been obvious for some time but now it is painfuly so:

Israel views the situation with alarm. "The idea was to make Iraq a partner in the moderate Arab camp. Instead, it has come under the influence of Iran, a state that calls for Israel's destruction," said Ephraim Sneh, Israel's deputy defense minister. Western diplomats are reluctant to describe Iran as a victor but concede that for the moment, at least, it looks that way. "Iran won the first round," said a senior Western diplomat in an Arab state. "But there is a long way to go, and if the U.S. leaves Iraq and other countries in the region come in — Saudi, Syria — Iran's position could weaken."

Iran looks like the winner of the Iraq war-The Islamic Republic's clout in the region, confirmed by the Iraq Study Group, could cost the United States...LAT

J. McCutchen

Enuf to make a growed up man cry...

I don't think Bush ever planned on being a "foreign policy President" when he first ran in 2000. Then 911 happened, and he seems to have taken it as a sign from the all mighty that he was put there for a reason.

So, in effect, he subcontracted out his judgment to Cheney and the neoconservative movement. They had a full package of ideas he could purchase on the spot without having to think critically about his decisions.

The source of incompetence is not simply "implementation" and Bush's intellectual laziness, as neoconservatives would have us believe. It was, and is, the very idea that brute military force can help change a region for the better.

hoosiertransplant
I dunno, but I 'm afraid the commission report and all the traditional diplomatic/military/political thinking it represents is beside the point. We won't get out of Iraq until Bush/Cheney are out of the White House and I'm worried they're narcissitic enough to that their "winning" would justify ANYTHING. Constitutional crisis? I think we'll be lucky if the future's just that bad.

Re: Very simply, it worked. Americans were terrorized by 9/11. Terrorized into doing stupid things for stupid reasons expecting fairy tale results.

Corecvtion: Americans were outaged and all around mightily POed by 9-11. But even so note the timeline. While everyone was gung-ho on going after Al Qaida, it took theBush administration a year and a half to jawbone the nation into the Iraq War.

Even though Turkey's reluctance to help the US in Iraq has placed a strain on our relationship, things will have to sink a bit further before we're faced with outright confrontation. We can only hope that we have more competent leadership before that day arrives.

But make no mistake about it, the Turks are deeply nationalistic and see any advance for the Kurds in the region as a blow to their own prestige. In fact it was the rebuff from Washington, making it clear to Ankara that Turkish ground troops would not be participating in securing Iraq, that led to the chill in our relations.

As it is, there are signs that Kurdish money, manpower, and weaponry are making their way across the border from Iraq into eastern Turkey. Turkey has never been immune to terrorism, but the relative quiet since the 1998 capture of Ocalan seems to be coming to a close. As a consequence, Turkey has expressed on many levels (official/unofficial, public/private) that she will not hesitate to send her own troops into northern Iraq to "secure" the situation in in the event of a total meltdown. One can imagine that the definition of "meltdown" might be very different in Anatolia than it is in Washington.

..the cherries on the fruit salad cannot be picked while leaving the lemons and grapefruit to the garbage disposal

 I don't exactly get it, but I must say, I love the metaphor -- gives me both visual and olfactory sensations!

Jan Knaus

J. McCutchen

From Juan Cole's Informed Comment, 12/8:

"Bush/Shiites vs. Baker/Saudis?

In my article today at Salon.com, "Will Bush choose his new friends over his old? points out that "The president's Shiite allies in Iraq really don't like some of James Baker's Sunni-friendly suggestions."

By the time the Iraq Study Group report was released, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the previous week of diplomacy between Bush and the two leading Shiite politicians in Iraq. I argue that Bush's Shiite clients contribute to his policy-making."

I probably got carried away and fell into a more precise description of the way that Bush's behavior borders on criminal negligence.

The same way that a pitcher's mound borders on the infield.

I disagree. OK, we went blazing into Afghanistan and also into Iraq. We were also PO'd, but the overall attitude has been in sinc with Bush's call:

"Let's fight 'em there so we won't have to fight 'em here. In other words, thousands of Iraqis get blown up, but that is a small price to pay for no more terror at home.

Never mind that the two have nothing to do with one another; it did work. Our economy is being driven by a war machine, which brings no money back into circulation here; billions being thrown away in Iraq "reconstruction" while New Orleans sits there; a stupid fence planned to keep Mexicans, etc out (all couched in "BOOOO!" language.

Yes, we were and are terrorized. That is how Bush got as many votes as he did in the last election. (You'll notice I didn't say he won, but he did get enough votes to pull it off --- again.)
Jan Knaus

Let gas hit $5 a gallon, and many Americans would be ready to endorse a Roman-style subjugation. Frightening, yet true. Remember, a majority of Americans were ready to support the invasion in the first place, talked in to it for the flimsiest of reasons.

That's good for you, sort of.

I fear my way of distilling complexities into brief sentences didn't work too well - and I must admit that the wording may have been my sister's from last July when she was engrossed by her mates' support and/or enthusiasm for Israel's warfare in Lebanon - but it reflects the most striking experience from my U.S.-stint: The widespread tendency to view warfare in principle in a lot brighter light than anywhere else I've ever been, or at least to focus on positive potential aspects of military aggressions rather than the more negative immediate short- and longterm aspects for struck families.

I wrote about it slightly more elaborated a year ago.

/Tuomas

which book is that?

there's of course a big difference between being a "wartime" President and a "foreign policy" President. ideally the former would be predicated on the latter. but when you get someone just interested in war, you get disaster.

so no doubt Bush has had an attraction to "wartime" status, but notice that he set out an explicit rejection of "national building" in the 2000 campaign, all of his major rhetorical themes were domestic (rarely, if ever, mentioned "terrorists"), and he made a series of actions early on in his 1st term that communicated a clear disdain, again, for foreign policy priorities. he rejected diplomatic intervention in a number of these key policy issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

so what we've witnessed is a faulty neoconservative objective based on naive assumptions about the power of military force, and a failed President who was not intellectually equipped to handle such an objective. but it remains an interesting question, in my mind at least, as to whether Neocons would have successfully persuaded him (and majority voters) to invade Iraq if 911 had never happened.

Rice should resign no matter what. That she ignored the solicitations of Tenet and company back in July of 2001 is all any person with even a minimum of scruples would need. She is demonstrably incompetent (par for Bush appointees) and has no care for this country at all. Were it so we would be in a very different place right now. In any other circumstance she would be charged with gross criminal negligence and an untold number of counts of some form of murder. I wish someone could tell me why she hasn't been indicted. She is arguably responsible for of one of the biggest screw ups in our history and yet she remains in a position of power and everyone acts as though nothing happened. How anyone can have anything but hatred and loathing for this administration is beyond me.

thepeoplechoose

Awhile ago it was reported Pentagon advisors were suggesting that forcing the government to make nice with the Sunnis wasn't working and just picking a winning side (Shiites) and letting them Saddam the Sunnis was the way to go.

Baker, Cheney and Bush 1 have close ties to the Saudis. Cheney was summoned last week to Riyadh while their DC ambassador wrote that "no pogrom for Iraqi Sunnis" WaPo op-ed. I think Cheney got the same msg: they'll do whatever is necessary to keep their cousins from being booted or wiped out.

Human slaughter in the world's gas station really benefits no one.

Our economy is being driven by a war machine,

Uh no, our economy isn't being driven by the war machine. The Pentagon budget is what $400 billion a year? Let's add in all costs associated with the GWOT, off and on budget, and let's say it's doubled to $800 billion. That's in a $11 trillion dollar economy. This isn't WW2 and they're not working double shifts cranking out F-15s these days or converting the auto industry into the M1A1 tank and Humvee industry.

Massive borrowing from our future is driving the economy.

I don't know about any pre-2000 book, but Paul O'Neill said that Bush wanted to invade Iraq before 911.

I've read somewhere that some believe Bush the Elder lost re-election because he didn't finish the job in Iraq.

You mean 41, right? Old man Bush was 41. Junior is 43.

I'll bring a fiddle for Bush, you bring the matches.

intentions and war plans are a far cry from actually invasion. think back on the political environment before 911. no way. a President Cheney may have tried it regardless of the environment, but I just don't see Bush (or Rove) doing it unless there were a clear political path, and Bush's numbers were dropping as of 9-10. Bush was destined to be a 1-term president before 911, and he basically took advantage of a fearful electorate and sold them on a war that he thought would keep his ratings high.

Yeah well unfortunately $5 a gallon won't happen until a Dem is in the WH.

What a clear and illuminating spotlight upon the ignorance of many contemporary conservatives. To allow an Independent Kurdistan in Northern Iraq is an asinie idea. The Kurds would not leave it at that; they would attempt to foment rebellion in Kurdish Iran and Turkey. Turkey and Iran would then form an alliance, significantly increasing Iran's role in the Middle East, making them even more intransigent. This would in turn piss-off any Sunni led countries; Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc., and would greatly enable the rising of the Shia Crescent from Egypt, East to Pakistan, North to The Central Asian Steppes, possibly even into parts of China. Hardly the result that NeoCons are looking for.

This would also infuriate Turkey, which is a long term ally of the US, and NATO Member. The ISG Report offered some good analysis:

Another key unresolved issue is the future of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in northern Iraq that is home to substantial numbers of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen. The Kurds insisted that the constitution require a popular referendum by December 2007 to determine whether Kirkuk can formally join the Kurdish administered region, an outcome that Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk staunchly oppose. The risks of further violence sparked by a Kirkuk referendum are great.

[...]

Turkish policy toward Iraq is focused on discouraging Kurdish nationalism, which is seen as an existential threat to Turkey’s own internal stability. The Turks have supported the Turkmen minority within Iraq and have used their influence to try to block the incorporation of Kirkuk into Iraqi Kurdistan. At the same time, Turkish companies have invested in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, and Turkish and Kurdish leaders have sought constructive engagement on political, security, and economic issues.

The Turks are deeply concerned about the operations of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)—a terrorist group based in northern Iraq that has killed thousands of Turks. They are upset that the United States and Iraq have not targeted the PKK more aggressively. The Turks have threatened to go after the PKK themselves, and have made several forays across the border into Iraq.

[...]

As a major Sunni Muslim country on Iraq’s borders, Turkey can be a partner in supporting the national reconciliation process in Iraq. Such efforts can be particularly helpful given Turkey’s interest in Kurdistan remaining an integral part of a unified Iraq and its interest in preventing a safe haven for Kurdish terrorists (the PKK).

[...]

RECOMMENDATION 30: Kirkuk. Given the very dangerous situation in Kirkuk, international arbitration is necessary to avert communal violence. Kirkuk’s mix of Kurdish, Arab, and Turkmen populations could make it a powder keg. A referendum on the future of Kirkuk (as required by the Iraqi Constitution before the end of 2007) would be explosive and should be delayed. This issue should be placed on the agenda of the International Iraq Support Group as part of the New Diplomatic Offensive.

One of the more terrifying aspects of the Bush Administration is how wise and thoughtful the Conservative Realists seem in comparison.

Going into Iraq (unlike Afghanistan) was hugely controversial and the nation most certainly did not follow in hypnotic lockstep behind Bush on that one. It took a year and a half of careful manipulating to build plurality (not even majority) support for the move and public passions were deliberately damped and narcotized (metaphorically speaking), precisely to allow the adminsitration a free hand while the people were not paying too much attention.

Re: That is how Bush got as many votes as he did in the last election.

Unlike most two term presidents he barely squeaked in (and yes, there may have been some skullduggery in that effort). Far from being some stampeding bovine herd, the American public has mostly been lulled into slumber and insouciance (not fear and terror) by an administration whose line is "Pay no mind to this nasty business; we know best and you can go back to your shopping sprees. Just give us a free hand. Daddy Bush knows best." For a whole raft of reasons the administration did everything it could to dampen public passions, else it could never have gotten away with half of what it has.

Well, the military-industrial complex is a big part of the government Keysian stimulus policy that FDR used to win WWI, and Truman maintained because he was afraid the Depression would return.

Tom