is there anything to the criticism the panel had no military representation on it..?? my mother

[sam sarrha]

watches Faux media theater..

[whistle]

1. Are you referring to the newly released Iraq Study Report?

[sam sarrha]

3. yess

[sam sarrha]

5. my reply is that this is a CIVIL WAR and the Pentagon had their chance and F'd it up!!

[pdxmom]

2. Well, Chuck Robb was a Marine from 1961-1970, including command

of an infantry company in Vietnam. He stayed in the Reserves until 1991. That should count, in comparison to Bush and his cadre of advisors.

[lapfog_1]

4. easy... military people do not make policy, they implement

policy (and only part of the policy, diplomats are supposed to implement the option A policy, military implements the option B policy... or the old saw "war is the failure of diplomacy" and "war is the last resort of the incompetent").

In any case, civilians make the policy here in the US, and the ISG is all about taking the conflict out of the military realm and putting it back into a policy debate.

[sam sarrha]

7. not to mention they are taking their orders from a Bat Shit Crazy man..

[Richard Steele]

6. Neither did the group that started the damn war, did they?

Except Colin Powell who, coincidentally enough, is
the only one to quit and distance himself from
the others.

[sam sarrha]

8. Bush was AWOL from draft dodging.. Rummy went to school, and Cheney's wife got pregnant 1 month

after the draft said a man with family and child was exempt.. yep.. nothing but draft dodgers..

[Lexingtonian]

9. no

It has no importance. The Group lists the military facts (e.g. tenfold underreporting of general violence in Iraq to the American public), but its military views are straight from the officer corps itself. No one serious disputes the empirical facts and the collective view of the U.S. military in the 'report' as a whole. The ISG isn't really concerned with the details of Iraq, anyway, just the big picture as it concerns the American elites.

The Group is all about Washington, about the semi-invisible Establishment of old white men behind the scenes who make up most of the internal opinion of the two Parties with a serious hold on power.

The ISG Report is these old men telling Bush that he and his last loyalists on "winning" in Iraq are now alone in the Beltway, are the crackpots and outsiders now. If you've seen the article about the "group therapy session" in the Oval Office yesterday- it's described and linked on the DailyKos front page- it's nothing about Iraqis and Americans dying, or principles of governance and warfare in a Middle Eastern country. It's all about a Presidency losing yet another bloc of allies and supporters.

If I understand the macroscopic bloc power politics of it, the Report has an unwritten context- which all the participants know- that the 62% left and center elements of the political spectrum are against continuation of the war as is. (Represented by Mitch Daniels and Leon Panetta.) The Report says that of the center Right that the Report represents, moderate Republicans (e.g. Sandra Day O'Connor), a 6% demographic, see no possibility of "victory" now and would go over to opposition when the Maliki government/experiment fails. So far no news- that is merely an accurate, though more informed, reflection of public political opinion.

What is "new" in the Report is that a hardcore generally Republican set of leaders and their demographic, the classical Right, which is an 8% demographic of the electorate, have decided that Iraq is costing them too much power domestically. This is the likes of James Baker and his true importance in the Group. (Baker is the smartest, softest, and nicest-looking politician that bloc has.)

This is the meaning and fallout of the 2006 election loss on the Republican side- a split forming between the classical Right wing (8%) and the reactionary wing (24%).

The ISG Report leaves Bush/Cheney with the solid support only of the reactionary ('hardcore conservative') wings of the Republican Party and a few Southern and other fringe Right winger Democrats, e.g. pro-Likudniks like Lieberman and Harman.

Real Establishment politicians, in order to stay viable and in the game continuously, can't be people of the two 24% end blocs (reactionaries and liberals) of the American political spectrum- that's where ideologues dwell. (That's why Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan weren't invited on the commission, btw.) But Bush, Cheney, et al. are defining- painting- themselves into that inviable position, into the right end bloc, losing everyone else. That's the political place Nixon went as everything collapsed in 1973 and where his political demise happened in 1974. This ISG Report is a cold and dire prediction of where "staying the course" leads for the Bush Presidency as a domestic power.

The Report has very little to do with the facts of Iraq and everything to do with national power in the States...as the whole Iraq venture has, from the start.

[sam sarrha]

10. thank you that was very informative... my 86 year old mother was asking.. that's all

she is very active and alert and follow it all.. but she watches faux news