Bolonium 79

Yet to find anyone in this town who isn't cynical about the ISG report. Most take the view that Baker knows Bush well, isn't going to cross him, and therefore is providing cover for him. Cover for what? A disheartened Prez who wants to quit is one view. Which sounds plausible but doesn't mesh with presidential rhetoric even slightly. Then there's the other view, which is that when Baker suggests "diplomacy" he means of this variety. Michael Ledeen finds light along those lines in the ISG report.

The Surrender Commission Report underlines the basic truth about The War, which is that we cannot possibly win it by fighting defensively in Iraq alone. So long as Iran and Syria have a free shot at us and our Iraqi allies, they can trump most any military tactics we adopt, at most any imaginable level of troops. Until the publication of the report this was the dirty secret buried under years of misleading rhetoric from our leaders; now it is front and center. Either deal effectively with Iran, or suffer a humiliating defeat, repeating the terrible humiliation of Lebanon in the Eighties when Iran and Syria bombed us out of the country (thereby providing the template for the terror war in Iraq).

He seems to be right. The delicately phrased message of ISG is: we're at war with Iran.