Iraq Panel's Real Agenda: Damage Control

Who the hell didn't know this?

Even a panel of experts, who knows everything about everything, could not salvage this mess.

As long as Bush is in the White House, nothing we do will be trusted. What's more, if the Bushites are not held accountable for their many crimes, both International and Constitutional, the U.S. will be a second rate power for years to come. (Given what we have done with power in the past as well as in the present, that is not an altogether bad thing)

It doesn't make one iota of difference how big and destructive our military is, economically we are sucking wind, and our credibility lies in shreds.

Unless we plan on nuking the world, and act of suicide, the people have to be responsible for what this administration has done and demand accountability and demand it in such a way that we cannot be ignored or refused.

Iraq Panel's Real Agenda: Damage Control:

Even as Washington waits with bated breath for the Iraq Study Group (ISG) to release its findings, the rest of us should see this gambit for what it is: an attempt to deflect attention from the larger questions raised by America's failure in Iraq and to shore up the authority of the foreign policy establishment that steered the United States into this quagmire. This ostentatiously bipartisan panel of Wise Men (and one woman) can't really be searching for truth. It is engaged in damage control.
Their purpose is twofold: first, to minimize Iraq's impact on the prevailing foreign policy consensus with its vast ambitions and penchant for armed intervention abroad; and second, to quell any inclination of ordinary citizens to intrude into matters from which they have long been excluded. The ISG is antidemocratic. Its implicit message to Americans is this: We'll handle things - now go back to holiday shopping.

The group's composition gives the game away. Chaired by James Baker, the famed political operative and former secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, former congressman and fixture on various blue-ribbon commissions, it contains no one who could be even remotely described as entertaining unorthodox opinions or maverick tendencies.Even as Washington waits with bated breath for the Iraq Study Group (ISG) to release its findings, the rest of us should see this gambit for what it is: an attempt to deflect attention from the larger questions raised by America's failure in Iraq and to shore up the authority of the foreign policy establishment that steered the United States into this quagmire. This ostentatiously bipartisan panel of Wise Men (and one woman) can't really be searching for truth. It is engaged in damage control.