Special Investigation, Part 2
It seems unlikely that anyone would want to be an Iraq Study Group member. For the group has come under unrelenting fire for its “stupid,” “muddled,” and otherwise “absurd” recommendations ever since it published its report.
In the United States, commentators-on the right especially-have called the group the “Iraq Surrender Group” and labeled its two chairmen “surrender monkeys.” Book of Virtues author William Bennett even said, “In all my time in Washington I’ve never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority.”
Overseas, Iraq’s Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, labeled the report “dangerous” and a blow to “the sovereignty of Iraq and its constitution.” A Sunni leader called it “a report to solve American problems, and not to solve Iraq’s problems.” Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, resented the “attempt to create a linkage between the Iraq issue and that of the Middle East.” Iran, naturally, didn’t like it either. A senior official there said, “The only carrot they offer is no regime change.”
Lost in all the criticism of the group’s recommendations is the group’s assessment of the current state of Iraq. With a million dollars of Congress’s money to do some real research, and sit-down interviews with everyone from President Bush to military officers in Iraq, the group was in position to produce perhaps the best bipartisan look we have at what’s going on in country. Consequently, while many have disputed its recommendations, few seriously dispute its assessment.
We’ll give you a detailed look at the group’s recommendations tomorrow, so you can form your own opinion. But we have to look at the state of Iraq first, to really understand where the recommendations come from.
—Michael Himick
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“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.”
—Opening line of the Iraq
Study Group Report
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