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A Congressional delegation headed by US Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday that they were squarely against the Baker-Hamilton report calling for the US to engage in dialogue with Iran and Syria, according to officials present at the meeting. According to the officials, McCain and Lieberman said that the report was just one more report circulating in Washington, and was not US policy. The report also called for the convening of an international peace conference, along the lines of the Madrid conference, and Lieberman said that it was as if former...

During the 2004 election, it was painfully apparent that the Democratic presidential candidate had no credible response when President Bush and the Republicans asked him the ultimate question about the war in Iraq: “What exactly would you do?” Unable to advocate immediate withdrawal, unwilling to suggest a specific timetable, John Kerry and his party were stuck, able only to grouse about the failure to find WMDs or to criticize inadequate troop levels. But now the Left has been given a built-in response to the question of what should be done. All they now have to say is: “Implement the Baker...

Walid Phares: Iraqization is right, but surrendering to fascist regimes is wrong Dec. 6, 2006 Washington DC, December 6, 2006. Mideast Newswire In his first analysis of the the Iraq Study Group recommendations, Mideast expert Walid Phares told three media outlets in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, that "the Iraq Study Group's recommendations resemble a salad bowl. The document contains some rational suggestions that should have been adopted by the Bush Administration years ago, and also some suicidal ideas that were tested decades ago and failed miserably." Phares, a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of...

The Big Lie About the Middle East,Tell James Baker: Arab nations don't care about the Palestinians No sensible person is against peacemaking in the Holy Land. Applause and hopefulness would seem the reasonable reaction to the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the Bush Administration "act boldly" and "as soon as possible" to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. But as a front-row observer of similar efforts over the past 15 years, I could muster neither response. In lumping the Iraq mess in with the Palestinian problem--and suggesting the first could not be fixed unless the second was too--the...

Sen. Arlen Specter, a 26-year Senate Republican, said he will visit Syria despite loud objections by the Bush administration, contending the situation in Iraq is so dire that it is time Congress step up to the plate and see what it can do. Specter, R-Pa., said in an interview late Friday that he is planning a trip to the Middle East that will include Israel and Syria. The senator said he and other Republicans are concerned that the administration's policies in the Middle East are not working and that other GOP members may follow in his footsteps. "I've talked to...

THE moment of truth, of decision, has arrived for Iraq. Last week the Iraq Study Group, appointed by the US Congress, made public its report. The bipartisan group, led by former secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and peopled by experienced former political and diplomatic practitioners, gave a sombre view of the state of affairs in Iraq. The group also put forward new proposals for US policy including talking to Syria and Iran, withdrawing US combat troops by the first quarter of 2008, and deploying up to 20,000 US troops to train and advise Iraqi...

I expected the report of the Iraq Study Group (or ISG, known in my home as the Iraq Surrender Group) would be bad, but what they delivered was quite horrendous. Retired Special Operations Master Sergeant James Hanson titled his post on it at the famous BlackFive blog “Group Studies Iraq- Fails to find clue bag.” Actually, he concludes, they can’t even tell you the color of the clue bag. Here was a commission tasked fix a war and almost none of them had even served in the military. James Baker and Chuck Robb both saw combat as Marines, but for...

There are all kinds of signs that traditional anti-Semitism in Europe is growing by leaps and bounds, while the UN continues to pass resolution after resolution condemning Israel for shooting back at Arab terrorists who murder Israelis almost on a daily basis. There is really nothing new about this; similar tendencies were seen just before World Wars I and II. Since 1948, when the United Nations approved the formation of the nation of Israel (and Arabs were offered and refused their own nation-state), and the United States was the first country to recognize Israel, Americans have supported Israel as one...

Iraq Study Group finds solution to the Jewish prob—I Mean, the Iraq problem. After several weeks, the much talked-about Iraq Study Group--tasked with finding a solution to the Iraq problem--announced its proposal, conceived mainly by former Secretary of State James Baker: The way to fix Iraq is for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Golan Heights. The proposal is titled “F--k the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.”Jimmy Carter was seen slapping his forehead and saying, “D’oh! Why didn’t I hire that guy?!”Even as I’ve kvelled over the past six years of the Bush administration’s almost unprecedented...

How did we go from winning the war in Iraq to losing overnight? Was this decided by the same committee that changed "Peking" to "Beijing"? These word changes are a fortiori evidence that liberals are part of a conspiracy. On what date did "horrible" and "actress" vanish from the English language to be replaced with "horrific" and "actor"? Who decided that? (Meanwhile, I'm still writing "Puff Daddy" in my nightly dream journal when everybody else has started calling him "Diddy.") When did "B.C." (before Christ) and "A.D." (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord") get replaced with "BCE" (before...

A collapse of the Iraqi state would be catastrophic -- for the people of Iraq, for the Middle East and for America's strategic interests. We need a new political and military approach to head off this impending disaster -- one crafted with bipartisan congressional support. But Baker-Hamilton isn't it. Our objective should be a large-scale U.S. military withdrawal within the next 36 months, leaving in place an Iraqi government in a stable and mostly peaceful country that does not threaten its six neighboring states and does not intend to possess weapons of mass destruction. The courage and skill of the...

Study this We have tapped the special-operations community and found some sour words for the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations for getting out of Iraq. An Army Green Beret told us: "The Iraq Study Group has taken a chapter out of our old playbook in Vietnam known as "Vietnamization." It predictably failed then, as this will now. The Democrats and Republicans now have a policy which will protect their candidates in future elections. As a bipartisan document, it is a politically marvelous way of abandoning Iraq without paying the political price at home as the party that lost the war.

Imagine the progress Franklin D. Roosevelt might have made as commander in chief of American forces during the Second World War if only he could have had the benefit of advice from James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the other members of the Iraq Study Group. Today's column applies its lessons -- indeed, whole sections of its text -- to that earlier quagmire: Snip Despite the greatest mass mobilization in our country's history, the enemy remains on the offensive and is proceeding to expand its earlier gains. To quote one of the distinguished historians on our extensive panel of consultants: "So...

Washington, D.C. – USA*Engage today commended the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group to constructively engage Iran as part of a broader Iraq strategy. “Isolation has rarely proved to be effective in changing the behavior of other governments. The Iraq Study Group report is further evidence that dialogue with the Iranian regime, however limited, is vitally important to U.S. national and security interests,” said Jake Colvin, Director of USA*Engage. “Not talking simply limits your options. Dialogue is not going to be a silver bullet, but it’s a more constructive approach to a country like Iran.” The Iraq Study Group is...

Well, I see everyone has their own opinion on what we should do in Iraq. So I figured I'd start a central thread for all ideas, comments, and debate. If the Mods don't like it, or think it's no good than they can delete it.

Editor of Arabic Reformist Website AAFAQ Criticizes Recommendations of the Iraq Study Group The following is the translation of an editorial titled "The Poisonous Report" that was posted on the Arabic reformist website www.aafaq.org on December 8, 2006. It was written by website editor Omran Salman. [1] "We may summarize the Iraq Study Group's report chaired by former secretary of state James Baker in one sentence: 'Handcuff the hands and free the tongue.' This conclusion went hand in hand with the common wisdom that says: 'When people sit to talk to one another, they forget their fighting.' This can be...

We're well into the Christmas season, and if the spirit of the Christ child is under assault we have an abundance of air and wind, a lot of it vile and foul. One of the study commissions at the United Nations, perhaps stacked with vegetarians overdosing on tofu and bean sprouts, concludes that the flatulence of cows is more damaging to the environment than automobiles. Poor Bossy, contentedly chewing her cud and minding her own business, now exposed as just another scapegoat (scapecow?) to blame for global warming. But it's not just cows. Some of our most distinguished statespersons are...

Upon further study, what strikes me most about the Iraq Study Group report, or ISGR, is its profound naivete. The group could better identify its operative philosophy as "unrealism," rather than realism. The modern form of foreign policy "realism" emerged, according to "The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World," in reaction to "idealism," an "approach which held that countries were united in an underlying harmony of interest – a view shattered by the outbreak of World War II." But there's more: "Rather than study the world as it might be, Realists maintained that a science of international politics must...

I was rewriting history, while walking along some cold lakeshore the other day. My thought was: if Churchill had only come to power in 1937, Chamberlain would have been installed to replace him in 1940. Had Churchill been in power, and refused to sign Munich, he would have been blamed for the outbreak of war. I can just hear the prattle in an English pub, circa 1950. "He pushed Hitler to it! Had it not been for Churchill, Hitler would have been satisfied with the Sudetenland, and England would never have had to surrender. Everything was Churchill's fault!" Today, everything...