More Thoughts on the Iraq Study Group

"A fatuous process yields, necessarily, fatuous results." Eliot Cohen in the Wall Street Journal.

"If they're lucky, this document will be tossed in the trash and these men and women will be the laughingstocks of posterity." Mark Steyn,"ISG Must Stand For, uh, Inane Strategy Guesswork", in yesterday's Chicago Sun Times

"In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible."
William Bennett in the National Review Online

Really, the report is that bad.

The things it gets right (i.e. the need for more trainers) are obvious and already being implemented.

The things it gets wrong are either ludicrous (i.e. the assertion that Syria and Iran share a common interest in Iraqi security as us -- or the Iraqis, for that matter) or outright dangerous (i.e. by linking the Sunni insurgency's violence to Israeli concessions, Baker and Hamilton have just justified every terrorist's claim that the way to defeat Israel is by killing Americans. Thanks, Gentlemen, we appreciate the support).

Again, if they had included any former Generals, even supposed "Clinton Generals" (i.e. Zinni, Shalikashvilli, Shelton) with an eye towards winning rather than retreating, then maybe it would have come up with some useful, or even remotely plausible, ideas.

But as it is, this is a report fails to makes any sense as a guide for national policy.