Baker has ALREADY been talking to Syria about Iraq

Beltway Bromo-Seltzer

A Sneak Peek at the Baker Commission Report

guest post by WERTHER, submitted through Straus Military Reform Project

Snip...

Given that the rules governing these types of commissions are as ritualized as Noh drama, we believe it is safe to roll out our own projection of what its findings will be. Here, in capsule form, are the Baker-Hamilton report's major findings:

There have been major challenges to stabilizing Iraq, but it remains vital to our interests; precipitate withdrawal risks chaos and a power vacuum (i.e., Iraq has been a colossal screw-up, but we are holding no one accountable. "Our" interests means superior folks like us. Nature abhors a vacuum; too bad it does not abhor drones and aged blowhards).

The next six months will be critical (Where have we heard that before? As we have been in Iraq for over 42 months, there have been at least 7 inflexion points where "the next six months will be critical." These are Fabian tactics).

The Iraq government needs to get its act together (Do tell. But how can the dummy solve problems created by the ventriloquist?).

The Iraq government must be given a timetable/benchmarks/some other euphemism (This finding will challenge the creative writing skills of the commission staff).

We need to strengthen/beef-up/robustify Iraq's army and police forces (No kidding; you geniuses earned your per diems for this? We tried that with a variety of indigenous forces: the ARVN, Hmong, Meo, Coral Gables Cubans, and a host of other Third World paladins now operating chop suey parlors in proximity to CIA front buildings in the Northern Virginia suburbs).

U.S. forces will redeploy to neighboring states (where the ruler has a CIA stipend or the local emir has business interests intertwined with the Bush family. The "deliberate" and "phased" withdrawal means the redeployment will proceed at the speed of the Humboldt Glacier).

The United States must pursue a multilateral approach with its friends/allies/coalition partners/nodding acquaintances in order to bring stability to Iraq (That would be a first; but why, then, has the Executive Mansion resubmitted the nomination of acting UN ambassador John Bolton, who vetoes UN resolutions as maniacally as Grover Cleveland vetoed pension bills? And for the express purpose "as part of a public relations strategy to put the onus on the Democrats for not allowing a vote on his appointment to go to the floor"). <2>

There must be a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. But Israel, our major ally/the only true democracy in the region/the light unto the gentiles, deserves blah blah blah (This is standard boilerplate wherewith the commissioners will simultaneously sound "balanced," yet not risk suffering a boycott against their lucrative consultancies by the Israel lobby).

There will be more in the report, but it will amount to cotton-wool packing, filigree, and cathedral gargoyles.

The politicians will rush to praise the report's sagacity, and heed it, more or less. For the Establishment, which stretches back through Clifford and Nitze, through Henry Stimson, Colonel House, Albert Beveridge, back through the Morgans and the Astors, through the founding of Skull & Bones, and finally alighting on Alexander Hamilton, the prototypical oligarch of the new North American republic, it will be a Bromo-Seltzer after the nightmarish hangover of a failed scion's rebellion against his illustrious father. It will be an assurance, like a bank vault slamming shut, that in Washington, everything will be fundamentally the same for all eternity.

Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.