have you read the ISG Report?

[LSK]

http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/iraq_study_group_report.pdf

[LSK]

1. kick for votes

[LSK]

2. kick

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. Wow.

Seems to me a lot of people must be condemning it without even having read it.

[LSK]

7. yes, I find that very dissappointing

I always thought DU as a place full of people who did their homework.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

4. Yes, it took me a full two days to get through all of it

I did a skim the first day it was out in pdf, then reread it after that.

I think it was cool of you to add a link to the report in the poll. Everyone should take the time to read it.

[Ganja Ninja]

5. Why bother? It's nothing but a dog and pony show.

It's a stall tactic and nothing more. Besides dumbass will ignore it anyway.

[LSK]

6. because it would be intellectually dishonest if you dont read it

And its paints an incredibly bad picture of the Iraq situtation from someone like James Baker.

[Ganja Ninja]

9. You might as well use it to line a bird cage for all the good it'll do.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. I take it that you didn't read it, yes?

So you're criticism seems unfounded.

[Ganja Ninja]

11. Have you been paying attention to what Bush said as ...

recently as yesterday? He said he going to 'make sure our troops have what they need to win in Iraq'. Now if the report says to start pulling the troops out as most news reports have summed up then how does Bush's statement square with that? Sounds like the whole thing was kind of a pointless exercise to me.
The only way this report will have a positive effect on the situation is if you drop a truck load of them on Bush's head.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

15. I don't agree with a lot of their reccomendations...

...primarily because I don't think they can be implemented in any reasonable way by the current administration. If someone sane were at the helm, a lot of the suggestions would make sense. Since it's Bush, even if he accepted the report wholesale he'd fuck up the implementation so badly that we'd still be in a bad state. Sad, but I think probably true.

As for it being a pointless exercise, I think that remains to be seen. Much depends on what a Democratic congress does with it come January.

[LynnTheDem]

10. "significant UNDER REPORTING of the VIOLANCE in Iraq..."

Yep read it.

Yep shows bush is fulla BULLSHIT. As always.

Yep bush will ignore it while people continue to die until bush is forced to face the fact that, as the report says, we are NOT winning, we CANNOT win, and it may be too late already to do anything but continue to die & lose.

[UTUSN]

12. Yip. It's only 84 pp long. It's unfulfillable

an Average Joe’s impressions of the ISG Report:

from a skim-along, yellow highlighting deal:

* The first half, the assessment of the present conditions, was more striking than the recommendations, being an official, U.S.-quasi-governmental description and ADMISSION of what a BLEAK, HELLISH condition the condition is in.

* The recommendations didn’t appear to sound “new,” seeming to repeat things that have been “in the air” forever from the cable village of perpetually talking idiots. Or perhaps from being repeated endlessly throughout the Report, being stated from the beginning in the Executive Summary, then going back over them all, like the cliché about teaching a lesson: First tell them what you’re going to say, then say it, then summarize it.

* There is, of course, no finger-pointing about that taboo topic, How We Got into This Mess (Shrub) to begin with. The most “startling” thesis (to the Shrubbites) is that we should, GASP, *TALK* to our enemies (except Al Qaeda). That in itself should have Shrub and CHEENEE driving nails in its coffin, if they are even giving it ANY consideration at all.

* The overall thrust of the plan calls for overwhelming levels of commitment and cooperation among the feuding Iraqis themselves, all the bordering neighbors, the Israelis and Palestinians, and the international community-----all of whose levels of commitment and cooperation, before and now, range from active hostility to apathy and cynicism. And Shrub on his own contains quite a chunk of the range of everything from hostility to apathy and cynicism just himself.

* A big bottom line is that we are going to Xmas-present to Iraq a humongous shitload of “equipment left behind”, like dollars, buildings, and equipment are going to make all the local kids play nicely.

* It would take visionaries on the scale of TRUMAN and MARSHALL to make this thing work, and Shrub and his flying monkies ain’t no TRUMAN-MARSHALL. The Shrubbites thought that CONQUEST would settle all, that is all.



-----------UNINTENDED COMEDY in the ISG members' bios---------

Will the comedy in the members' bios undercut its Report? If EAGLEBURGER names all of his kids "Lawrence" can a George FOREMAN grill deal be far behind? How about the irony of BAKER being on a commission for election reform? And SIMPSON really really likes his brother!!!1


--------
James A. Baker, III: "Mr. Baker's memoir--Work Hard, Study ... and Keep Out of Politics! Adventures and Lessons from an Unexpected Public Life-- ..."

"Mr. Baker was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for (pResident) George W. (Shrub) on the issue of Iraqi debt. In 2005, he was co-chair, with former President Jimmy Carter, of the Commission on Federal Election Reform."

--------
Lee H. Hamilton: "He is the author of A Creative Tension--The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress (2002) and How Congress Works and Why You Should Care (2004), and the coauthor of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (2006)."

--------
Lawrence S Eagleburger: "Following his resignation as Secretary of State on January 19, 1993, he joined the law firm of Baker... .... He joined the boards of Halliburton Company, Phillips Petroleum Company, and Universal Corporation."

"He is the father of three sons, Lawrence Scott, Lawrence Andrew, and Lawrence Jason."

--------
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.: "Mr. Jordan is the author of Vernon Can Read! A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001)."

--------
Edwin Meese III: "Meese is the author of With Reagan: The Inside Story, which was published by Regnery Gateway in June 1992; co-editor of Making America Safer, published in 1997 by the Hritage Foundation; and coauthor of Leadership, Ethics and Policing, published by Prentice Hall in 2004."

--------
Sandra Day O'Connor: "She holds a B.A. (with Great Distinction) and an LL.B. (Order of the Coif)... "

--------
Leon E. Panetta: "...teaches a Master's in Public Policy course at the Panetta Institute, ... and created the Leon Panetta Lecture Series."

--------
Alan K. Simpson: "His book published by William Morrow Company, Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press (1997), chronicles his personal experiences and views of the Fourth Estate."

"During the fall of 2000 he returned to his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, as a Visiting Lecturer in the Political Science Department and he continues to team teach a class part-time ith his brother, Peter, titled 'Wyoming's Political Identity: Its History and Its Politics," which is proving to be one of the most popular classes offered at UW."

"His only brother, Peter, also served as a member of the Wyoming State Legislature."

[LSK]

13. I thought its main value is in describing the sectarian violence

and that it is in fact a civil war.

The recommendations seemed lacking and more of the same except for the talking to Iran/Syria parts.

It demonstrated for me how significant the sectarian violence is and how hopeless the situation is.

[UTUSN]

14. Me, too n/t