Iraq Panel

[derrida]

I've been reading the Study group report since yesterday and it boils down to:


External
1). It is recommended that we pass the ball to neighboring countries and the international community.
2). It is recommended that we let someone else deal with Iran and nuclear things related to Iran.
3). It is recommended that we encourage Israel to stop pissing everyone in the region off.
4). It is recommended that we go back and fix Afghanistan.
5). Our military is rusty and tattered. We should fix this.

Internal
1). It is recommended that we leave Iraq eventually.
2). It is recommended that if things are going well we continue to provide assistance.
3). It is recommended that if things continue to go poorly we quietly pack up and leave.
4). A bunch of social milestones, such as a unified governmental body, that I'm not even going to ennumerate because they are patently ridiculous.
5). It is recommended that we keep in mind that the above list isn't going to happen. Not in a million years.
6). It is recommended that instead of taking the oil ourselves we set up some sort of crazy socialist oil sharing scheme.
7). Economy: Iraq is going to need one of those.
8). It is recommended that we encourage Iraq's diverse and wondrous ethnic, social, and religious groups to stop killing each other. Also Kirkuk is about to blow up. We should probably deal with that.
9). It is recommended we make the Iraqi army an actual army instead of something resembling what was mobilized by the US when it was under the Articles of Confederation.
10). It is recommended we make the Iraqi police an actual police force instead of... actually we're not even sure what the fuck the Iraqi police are doing, but intelligence suggests it is both terrifying and horrendous. We just need to get rid of the whole goddamned thing and start over from scratch.


Half of the list is part of Bush's stay-the-course Vietnamization scheme, the other half is begging other countries to help us out, and the final half has already been ruled out completely by the Administration. So Bush gets to run a couple international conferences, globetrot around Europe to play at that whole diplomacy thing, gets the press to report on his new tone and changing courses and whatnot, and he gets to not change a single goddamned thing.