Iraq Study Group Reaches Concensus

reporter writes to point us to a story in the Washington Post reporting that the Iraq Study Group has reached consensus and will issue its 100-page report on December 6: 'The Iraq Study Group, which wrapped up eight months of deliberations yesterday, has reached a consensus and will call for a major withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.' The Post mentions that first word of the panel's conclusions came from the New York Times yesterday. The Times points out that it is not clear how many U.S. troops would come home; some brigades might be withdrawn to Iraqi bases out of the line of fire from which they could provide protection for remaining U.S. operations.

Comments

Re:Word of advice from old British Empire...

[misanthrope101]

You're talking to an audience who is never, ever wrong, and who do not feel that the intractible, insoluble problems faced by every other great power in history apply to them. Every objection to the invasion of Iraq--that Saddam didn't have WMD, that Saddam wasn't involved with Al-Queida, that the invasion would destabilize the region and make terrorism worse--have proven true, and still they think they were right all along.

Iran wanted Saddam removed because they want a Shia superstate. This little gem of an idea was on the news for about 10 minutes a couple of years ago, when the Pentagon opined that Chalabi was an Iranian double-agent who duped the US with bad intel so Iran could foment a regime change to destabilize the region so the Shia majority could take control. But when the news agencies realized that they were saying that the entire Executive Branch of the US Government had been suckered by selective intelligence into doing the bidding of a known sponsor of terrorism, the story sort of dried up and went away. We're still working for Iran and Israel. Two masters, though with incompatible ends, but both being served by our own Wilsonian idealistic crusade mentality. It's an interesting, if depressing, situation.