A Turning Point for a Panel: 4 Harrowing Days in Iraq

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/world/middleeast/08tictoc.html

<snip>
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — For some members of the Iraq Study Group, the turning point came during four days in Baghdad in September. They found the trip so harrowing, they said, that they wondered if they could afford to wait to speak out about the disaster in Iraq.

Like other visitors, they arrived on a C-130 transport plane that performed a plunging corkscrew maneuver to avoid insurgent fire while landing at Baghdad’s airport. Then they were bundled into flak jackets and helmets and rushed onto attack helicopters for the five-minute flight to the Green Zone, the military-controlled neighborhood that is sealed off from the city.

There, they were placed in fleet of armored Humvees, each with a medic seated in the back to offer first aid in the event of a rocket attack. The roar of the Humvees’ engines could not mask the sound of explosions from car bombs outside the Green Zone. The security measures had been routine for most of the American occupation, but they were still jarring to these first-time visitors to the war zone.

“You understand this is real — this is a state of siege,” said Edward P. Djerejian, the former American ambassador to Israel and Syria who helped draft the Iraq Study Group’s report, released Wednesday, which called for an overhaul of American policy in Iraq. “The trip to Baghdad really solidified that perception for all of us.”

...more

[fishnfla]

1. Our local radio guy was whining how they never left the green zone

from his fat ass in the safety of his studio

This ISG report is starting to get panned for all the wrong reasons. Such as: we cant negotiate with terrorists states during the war on terror. Shit, during the cold war there was a hot line to Moscow!

[kentuck]

2. But the danger lay in just getting to the Green Zone...

Obviously, it opened their eyes.

[fishnfla]

3. Its reich wing code speak

"they never left the green zone"

Pundits would try and paint the media as sitting in the GZ reporting all the bad stuff, while all the glorious things were happening all over the place they never reported.

the irony is, all those GOP campaign workers they sent over with Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, you know, the ones who were suppossed to be doing all the valiant work out there? Never left the GZ. Wouldn't, it was the only place they could party.