ISG wanted an interim report in September,midterm elections scrapped idea

[sabra]

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

<snip>

Whatever their early differences over the American venture in Iraq, some of those serving on the 10-member bipartisan panel and its staff say the trip to Baghdad brought them to a common understanding of the catastrophic situation in Iraq and how much had gone wrong in American planning for the occupation.

They said the situation in Baghdad was so bleak — and in many ways, so much worse than they expected — that the four Democrats and three Republicans on the trip debated releasing an interim report as soon as they returned home. They worried that a final report released after the November elections, as planned, would be too late to have any hope of salvaging the situation.

One Democrat on the trip, Leon E. Panetta, White House chief of staff under the former president Bill Clinton, said the idea of an interim report was scrapped out of a concern that “if we put out something before the election, we’d be chewed up” in a political fight.

[SutaUvaca]

1. But hey, what's a few more months' worth of dead and maimed?

n/t

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. I think the point they're trying to make...

...is that they thought the report would be seen as a political weapon if it came out during the election, and thus not be taken seriously. Whether or not they were right on that point we'll never know.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. Interesting article.

Especially this:

Mr. Djerejian said the draft reports were heavily edited by the 10 members of the study group. Sandra Day O’Connor, a former Supreme Court justice, was an exacting editor and insisted that the report be written and organized so that it could be readily understood by people without foreign policy expertise.

Like a certain President?