Former officials launch fresh look at US Iraq policy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prominent former American officials announced a high-powered task force on Wednesday to look at alternatives for U.S. policy there amid plummeting support for the conflict that has killed thousands of Americans and Iraqis since it began three years ago.
The study group is headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat who co-chaired the September 11 commission that examined those attacks.
Baker said the 10-member panel was created at the urging of members of the U.S. Congress who felt a need for “an honest assessment of where we are and how we go forward and take this out of politics.”
Terrific! This will be just as effective as these other new organizations, all formed and funded within the last month:
The Y2K Virus Investigatory Committee
- Are the world’s computer networks safe?
The “Race for a Vaccine” Polio Commission
- There IS a cure!
The Postcontraception Task Force
- Testing the effectiveness of the “morning after condom.”
Murder Victims Anonymous
- Suicide victims welcome too!
The Kings’ Horses and Kings’ Men Coalition
- To safeguard (and if necessary reassemble) Senator Dumpty
The Hydrogen Zeppelin Safety Committee
- Are they safe?
The Barn Door Regulatory Task Force
- “We will determine how the horse escaped, and examine if anything we could do to the door now might help recover him…”
Fanny Roborat
58 comments
waterfowler
March 15, 2006 at 4:34 pm
1The Geometric Geography Study.
How Columbus avoided falling off.
dee
March 15, 2006 at 4:48 pm
2Perhaps they’ll weigh in with an opinion regarding cassettes vs. 8-track, too.
Derek
March 15, 2006 at 5:01 pm
3Don’t forget about “The Surgeon General’s Action Committee For Disseminating Healthful Information Concerning the Vitality Of The Four Bodily Humors.”
Ann
March 15, 2006 at 5:13 pm
4I like the “take this out of politics” notion. As if.
Siobhan
March 15, 2006 at 5:19 pm
5Dee, that’s an agenda item for the Magnetic Media Committee. Work begins in a few months, after the final report is issued on “Beta vs. Super Beta”.
cooper
March 15, 2006 at 8:12 pm
6“…the U.S. Congress felt a need for ‘an honest assessment of where we are …’.” Jeez, why do you think the Congress felt the need for an honest assessment? Hasn’t the White House been keeping them abreast on all things Iraq?
How about a Blue Ribbon Committee to study “The Statistical Chances of a Snowball in Hell”?
Or “The Water Under the Levee Breach of Contract” Quorum of New Orleans.
Sharon
March 15, 2006 at 8:30 pm
7The Committee to Investigate the Feasibility of Forming a National Agency to Coordinate the Development of a Network of Computers to Provide Redundant Communication Paths in Case of National Emergency
The Committee to Investigate…[yadda yadda yadda] of a National Network of Interstate Highways to Provide a Means of Transporting Large Military Convoys in Times of National Emergency
Dan
March 15, 2006 at 9:54 pm
8ANYTHING with James Baker involved in it creeps me out. Didn’t he lead the effort to push Bush’s “election” through in 2000? When I heard his name connected with the current president, I knew evil had come back to the White House.
ice weasel
March 15, 2006 at 10:18 pm
9Baler is bush’s arch fixer. If something needs to be done, competently, baker is usually involved.
Though all that collecting money for the war effort in Iraq certainly didn’t go well for jimbo.
Katie
March 15, 2006 at 11:16 pm
10The Sartorial Splendor Committee
Shit or Shinola? Just what are the trends for Summer 2006?
katie
nigel
March 15, 2006 at 11:16 pm
11hahahaha F-f-f-fuuuunnny!!
Oh, wait, no it’s not…
Maximum Bob
March 15, 2006 at 11:17 pm
12Let us not forget the Pulling National Policy Out of Your Butt Oversight Committee. Sure, it’s unsanitary, but do we know of any documented cases where this kind of thing went wrong?
siobhan
March 15, 2006 at 11:51 pm
13Said National Policy to be pulled with the teeth, as heads are already conveniently in place.
cooper
March 16, 2006 at 8:32 am
14Good point, siobhan, but please don’t try that at home, kids. These guys are pros!
cooper
March 16, 2006 at 8:54 am
15I hope we’re all ready for “Pre-emptive Strike 2″, as America once again wraps itself in the flag and girds its loins for war!
http://www.cnn.com/
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FF8DCACE-C8CC-44C1-A8F5-7714397 E405F.htm
Didn’t we already pay to see this movie? Isn’t that the one that was so long, we got up in the middle and walked out?
Dave D
March 16, 2006 at 9:09 am
16Hey, I’m looking forward to the slide show. Bet it’ll be a real doozy, even better than Powell’s (learn from your mistakes and all that you know).
Sharon
March 16, 2006 at 9:24 am
17Bolton does a passable Condoleeza Rice imitation. I guess the WH realized that the “smoking gun…mushroom cloud” analogy might not fly again. “Like 9/11, only with nuclear weapons” is much
more simple-mindedeasier to understand.Murray
March 16, 2006 at 10:26 am
18Now let’s see. Using false premises, the Bush people destroyed a country, and due to incomprehensible incompetence during each step of the way, led to its people being in open conflict and heading for an all out civil war. We have sacrificed 2300 soldiers and most of a trillion dollars so far and there is no way out.
Hold someone responsible?
Naaa. Form a committee.
Stephen
March 16, 2006 at 11:35 am
19It doesn’t matter what the commitee comes up with, the WH won’t listen. Congress refuses to hold Bush, et all responsible for their mistakes, why catalog them one more time? I can think of better ways to spend my tax money. Heck sending Chenney hunting is a better way to spend my tax money!
Julia
March 16, 2006 at 1:16 pm
20Hey, why not send Cheney hunting in Ira*?
Mary
March 16, 2006 at 1:23 pm
21Proof that, after this administration, our country will never be able to recognize incompetence ever again.
Anyway we can gird our lions and call out the dogs of war? ;-D
Vinft
March 16, 2006 at 1:27 pm
22Dan (#8)- Evil left the White House??? Better set up a bi-partisan commission to find out how Evil got out, because a loss of Evil could seriously impede our ablility to fight the War On Terror (WOT)(TM).
dee
March 16, 2006 at 7:15 pm
23Right now I’d be interested in a “Why Do I Even Bother With Filling Out An NCAA Bracket Every Year?” Blue Ribbon Panel.
Hot Tub Tommy
March 16, 2006 at 7:25 pm
24Well, boys and girls, I really feel great today. Just back from 4 fund raisers in a row, one of them - believe or not - in Travis County. Yeehaw! Hot Dang it, I raised $425,000 for my re-election campaign. It was just dumb luck I suppose, but having Bush and half the cabinet coming out today and beating the Hell out of the war drums, certainly didn’t hurt. $425,000 in one day for an indicted Congressman has got to be some kind of record.
Well, enough about me, how was your day? HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!!
Representative Thomas Delay (R, TX)
not that Pete
March 16, 2006 at 7:26 pm
25Gird our lions, gild our loins, grid our… it all sounds a little hazardous. Especially if there are dogs running around.
Siobhan
March 16, 2006 at 8:10 pm
26Maybe, with the blessings of hindsight, Baker’s group can get a better handle on it than these assessments of our situation made back in the day.
Murray
March 16, 2006 at 8:50 pm
27So Russ Fiengold (our only Democrat with intact balls) set forth a motion to censure Bush for easily proven illegal acts. And what was the reaction from our other lions of democracy? Uhh.. They were all at the copy machine printing up new “Kick Me! Kick Me hard!” signs for their backs. (Except for the ones whose signs said (F*ck Me! F*ck Me hard!)
dee
March 16, 2006 at 9:31 pm
28I’ve let those “lions of democracy” know that they shouldn’t bother asking me for support if they don’t support Feingold. They’re so worried about what the Republicans (and the media they control) will say about them. Haven’t they realized by now that they could say “The sky is blue” and the Republican spin would be “Democrats ignore terrorist clouds!”
cooper
March 16, 2006 at 11:14 pm
29Congress raised the debt ceiling today to 8.9 trillion dollars to help fund port security? Apparently not.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/16/port-security-funding/
cooper
March 17, 2006 at 12:22 am
30For your consideration…
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war53.html
nigel
March 17, 2006 at 12:37 am
31Based on the tenacity of “Intelligent Design” and “the Holocaust as an urban legend” in the modern world, I think we should start a “Manhattan (Kansas) Project” whose goal would be to “put the genie back in the bottle”, i.e. uninvent the atom bomb.
The shrill pronouncements of Condi, Bolton and company that Iran getting the bomb would be the end of the world as we know it are absurd. We could nuke the entire region into the stone age in a heartbeat, should it come to that. They’re just looking for an excuse to consolidate the fronts. Eccentricities and testosterone levels aside, neither Iraq or Iran are markedly uncivilized (or a strategic threat), if we would just do the Christian thing and ignore the hell out of them.
SeattleDan
March 17, 2006 at 12:58 am
32Well, yes.Having nuclear capability is not the same as having a delivery capacity. Iran gets a bomb? How can they deliver it? They dont seem to have long-range missles or an air force that can do anything. I’d be much more worried about some rogue group that somehow develops a bomb that can be assembled in the target area and used there. Not that I think Iran should have a bomb. But the U.S. has screwed up our Middle East policies for fifty years now, and I’m not at all sure how it can ever be redeemed.
Mary
March 17, 2006 at 11:18 am
33You are a step ahead of me Dan. I’m certain this administration has made it that the US can’t redeem its MidEast policies. (sigh)
Ann
March 17, 2006 at 4:29 pm
34Reminds me of a comedy routine:
Guns don’t kill people…bullets kill people. The guns just make ‘em go faster.
(Whadyawant? It’s Friday afternoon!)
waterfowler
March 17, 2006 at 4:36 pm
35This began as a demonstration of “2-party” idiocy. But, it doesn’t take long for y’all to get to “Bush is EVIL”.
Murray, please prove the illegal acts. If you think Pelosi, Clinton, etc… wouldn’t…nevermind…y’all are scaring me again…
Murray
March 17, 2006 at 5:55 pm
36WF
This is from the University of Chicago Law School
“In 1978, after a broad range of abusive and unlawful investigative practices by the Nixon administration came to light, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This legislation was designed to strike a careful balance between protecting civil liberties and enabling the government to protect the nation against foreign enemies. FISA established special rules dealing with foreign intelligence surveillance, and set up a special “secret” court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to handle these matters, but it retained the probable cause and warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment. FISA criminalizes any electronic surveillance not authorized by statute, and it made clear that it set forth the exclusive means by which foreign intelligence surveillance may be conducted.”
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2006/01/bushs_spy_progr_1.html
Do I need to make that clearer?
The GDSALSOS admitted to not getting FISA permission. It is illegal to wire tap with out getting permission. What he did was illegal.
You may think that his breaking the law was not a big deal because he was protecting the country and only a Hate America Liberal wouldn’t want us to protect our country, but then you are buying into the GDSALSOS’s simple minded false issue.
Of course we want to protect the country.
But if it is virtually as easy to do it legally, why break the law, what does he have to hide? I have no problem with him wire tapping (and I think it probably included my Saudi born son-in-law). That’s not the real issue. The real issue is not breaking the law when you do it.
Of course none of this rises to the level of getting a blow job, an impeachable offence.
Siobhan
March 17, 2006 at 6:13 pm
37Fowler - I’ve never called Bush “evil”, and I probably never will. Incompetent, wrong, stubborn, lying, out-of-touch, and criminal - but not evil. It would almost be more comforting to know that he is evil because at least it would provide a logical explanation for his behavior.
Maximum Bob
March 17, 2006 at 7:21 pm
38As any rock-ribbed Republican will tell you, Murray, Clinton wasn’t impeached for sex, he was impeached for lying about sex under oath.
Oh, wait a minute–that’s a completely chickenshit reason, too. Never mind.
Ann
March 17, 2006 at 7:25 pm
39BUSH IS EVIL.
There, I’ve said it.
waterfowler
March 17, 2006 at 7:35 pm
40Interesting Murray. Keep reading. You forgot to include Dan Mcquire’s position along side the professors’, and he admits to leaning your way. Still clear as mud and no “proof”.
cooper
March 17, 2006 at 8:45 pm
41SeattleDan - “Iran gets a bomb? How can they deliver it?” Well maybe packed into a shipping container, that looks exactly like the other 573 containers onboard a boat sailing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that arrives in San Diego, LA, Portland, or Seattle and is remotely detonated before Customs has a chance to check it out. One of hundreds of ways of getting a bomb to us without missiles.
Ann
March 17, 2006 at 8:52 pm
42It’s clear as mud because the LSASOS (I can’t remember the whole thing) and his henchpeople are throwing the mud on it. That’s a terrific strategy!
Landis
March 17, 2006 at 9:29 pm
43GDSALSOS and LSASOS? A little help please for those of us who are acronymally challenged?
And, by the way Murray, that’s:
Hate America Liberal™
siobhan
March 17, 2006 at 10:34 pm
44goddamn sorry-ass lying sack of shit, and (presumably) lying sorry-ass sack of shit.
hedera
March 18, 2006 at 12:57 am
45Thanks, Landis, for asking, except I’m kind of sorry you did. It may be a convenient reference but it’s kind of unimaginative.
Murray
March 18, 2006 at 10:59 am
46hedera, no one said that an accurate description needs to be imaginative.
WF, that was good, apply “Intelligent Design” non thinking to the issue where you needn’t prove anything but just enough BS to muddy the water and poof! you have proved your point.
You guys can take a trout stream and say “The water’s not clear at all, watch…”
waterfowler
March 18, 2006 at 5:40 pm
47Murray,
I just read the page from the Chicago Law School that you linked and noticed you only included what the prof had to offer, but none of the responses. Maybe you should have read the whole thing before offering it as suggested reading.
Pete IVDL
March 19, 2006 at 9:39 am
48Hey wf, I know for a fact that the proof that Bushie-wushie (GDSALSOS) isn’t e-vil is contained in signed confessions, in locked boxes, in the bunkers where the WMDs are.
What is it with most neocons in the US? First, they don’t want hard evidence of a cause to go to war, then they demand hard evidence that there was no hard evidence.
Struhniarbym.
siobhan
March 19, 2006 at 2:48 pm
49“Struhniarbym”
Que??
Pete IVDL
March 19, 2006 at 3:55 pm
50Sorry, old joke. mybrainhurtS. (Backwards stuff was really funny when I was 15 or 16, can’t imagine why…)
siobhan
March 19, 2006 at 5:35 pm
51It looks like some sort of curse in, I dunno, Welsh. I like it…
Murray
March 19, 2006 at 8:08 pm
52OK WF
The BS tool that the Bush Apologists use to muddy the water is this: “The AUMF authorized the President ‘to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 . . . in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.’
They (you) say that this act gave Bush the power to do anything he wants to prevent terrorist attacks. Either the law says that he may do anything LEGAL or the law is seriously flawed.
Is it your contention that this act allow the president to do anything he feels will protect us including sacrificing virgins? How about, in order to relieve the overwhelming pressure of war time administration and better be rested to deal with the possible attack that could come at any time, the president employs female interns to “help relieve his stress,” and then in order to keep the moral of overseas troops up he denies any such liaison, even under oath? Does the AUMF allow this too? I believe that we were at war with in the Balkans when Clinton got his blow job but I don’t remember the right claming that he was protected by the AUMF. Maybe that’s just the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
cooper
March 21, 2006 at 12:31 am
53siobhan, Welsh? Maybe, but it looks like there are too many vowels for it to be Welsh; of course, you’re more in tune to that part of the world, so I bow to your superior knowledge.
Siobhan
March 21, 2006 at 1:30 pm
54Well, I was thinking Austrian at first, but that “y” at the end seemed more Welsh. If you split the difference, maybe Belgian?
Ann
March 22, 2006 at 6:14 pm
55Austrian and Belgian are languages now? I can’t keep up…:-)
Jim
March 22, 2006 at 6:54 pm
56Agreed,
While I’m not a linguist, I’m thinking shouldn’t it be Bavarian and Flemish?
Jim
March 22, 2006 at 6:56 pm
57How about Edelweissian and Brusselian?
Siobhan
March 23, 2006 at 2:47 pm
58Actually, it sounds a little phlegmish the way I pronounce it, but…