The vaunted Iraq Study Group's main accomplishments to date have been to issue a series of empty platitudes, to embolden terrorists who think America is now beatable even on our own soil, and to cause to plummet the desire of the American populace to endure until a peaceful solution in Iraq is achieved.
Part two of the one-two punch has just been delivered. First, the Democrats took power in both houses of Congress, a defeat which the Republicans richly deserved. Now, just as the Republicans are staggering back up off the canvas, the Iraq Study Group weighs in.
The Iraqis didn't think much of it, nor did the Israelis or the US military. For that matter, neither did the mullahs.
"Abandon ship! Abandon ship! But not for a few more months!"
Perhaps this was not the intent of the ISG report, but liberals, both of the political and the media persuasion are latching onto the report to further their Bush hatred. The claim is essentially that Bush's policies have been all wrong and that he is at fault for the mayhem occurring in Iraq. A favorite verb in the past few days is "repudiate".
The report isn't all fodder for Bush haters. Some good has come of it, such as the mention that Saudi Arabians are deep into funding the Sunni side of the killing in Iraq.
But William Bennett had this to say about it:
Perhaps the most systemic problem with the report is it didn’t tell us how to win; it answered how to get out. The commissioners answered the wrong question, but it was the only one they wanted to answer. In all my time in Washington, I’ve never seen such smugness, arrogance or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible.
Terror leaders are jubilant in that, because of the tenor of the ISG report, they feel they have and will continue to prevail over America.
Abu Abdullah said following a withdrawal from Iraq, the U.S. will be defeated on its own soil.
"America must understand that with anti-American governments in Latin America and with Islam growing and reinforcing, including in the U.S. itself, the next step would be a total defeat on their (American) land, not a relative one like they are facing in Iraq," he said.
About the time the ISG report was prematurely made available to the American media, the war's popularity rating was at only 36%, and it's going down.
