December 19, 2006

Baker's ISG: Shilling for the Saudis

By Ed Lasky
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) recently released its version of the "road map" to guide America's policy in Iraq. Despite an orchestrated public relations campaign that bordered on the farcical, with reverential media treatment at first, the unrealistic nature of some of the policies led to withering criticism. By the next Sunday, Brit Hume was able to conclude  thatthe almost now completely forgotten Baker-Hamilton commission, which arrived [with] great fanfare... got so much criticism from all sides [that it] now seems to be an irrelevance.The ISG turned into a colossal dud, a missed opportunity of huge magnitude. Its failure to engage with the real dilemmas, and instead substitute a combination of wishful thinking and hostility toward Israel, was actually quite predictable. An autopsy of its decaying corpse reveals a disturbing pattern among those charged with creating and staffing the Group. While Professors Walt and Mearsheimer famously hypothesize that an...(Read Full Article)