Every Democrat that President Bush chose for the Iraq Study Group has strong ties to Bill Clinton: Vernon Jordan who recommended Monica for her job; Leon Panetta, Clinton's Chief of Staff, William Perry, Clinton's Secretary of Defense, Charles Robb, Senator from Virginia and Clinton's primary legislative water carrier in the Senate and Lee Hamilton, Clinton's primary legislative water carrier in the House.
I can somewhat understand having some Democrats in the Iraq Study Group but why are they all CLINTON Democrats?
NEWSWEEK COVER: Father Knows Best
Sunday November 12, 10:42 am ET
Bush 41 and the Rumsfeld-Gates Swap at the Pentagon: 'His Fingerprints Are All Over This,' Says Friend
Baker-Bush 41 Adviser and Co-Chair of Iraq Study Group-Cautions New Defense Leadership Will Not Bring Quick Fix: 'This is Not a Precooked Deal ... and There is no Magic Bullet'
NEW YORK, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- While George H.W. Bush denies helping orchestrate the replacement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with Robert M. Gates -- an adviser from his own administration, a Bush friend tells Newsweek, "his fingerprints are all over this." The friend, a veteran of previous GOP administrations, explains further: "This would have been done by nuance and indirection. Forty-one would have said to 43, 'One of the people who I've been talking to who might be helpful is Bob Gates'." In Newsweek's November 20 cover package, "Father Knows Best," (on newsstands Monday, November 13), a team of editors and correspondents-including Editor Jon Meacham, Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas, Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe, Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff, National Security Correspondent John Barry and Political Correspondent Jonathan Darman -- reports on the president's decision to bring in members of his father's administration to chart a new course in Iraq, analyzes the complex histories of those involved and looks at other figures that will take on new prominence in Washington in the wake of the Congressional elections.
It has been widely speculated that James A. Baker III, the elder Bush's secretary of State, now co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, may also have been instrumental in making the Rumsfeld-Gates switch. He was spotted with both Bush father and son, as well as Gates, in early October at the launching of the new aircraft carrier, USS George H.W. Bush. But Baker, like Bush, is not likely to have been plotting in public. "For a meeting like that," says a former Baker aide, "the maximum number of people involved is two." When asked whether he played a part, Baker tells Newsweek, "You don't have a virgin here," meaning he wasn't about to spill any secrets. (The White House says that Baker had nothing to do with the Pentagon swap.) Baker also warned against getting too optimistic about some sudden deliverance from the agonies of Iraq. "Look," he protested. "This is not a precooked deal. And there is no magic bullet."
For his part, the president was said to be indifferent to the press chatter about the decision to bring in his father's team members. "I don't care," he told his advisers when they asked him, the morning after the elections, how he wanted to deal publicly with the suggestion that he was picking one of his father's advisers. "He doesn't think the neocons ran him over a cliff and now he has to go to Dad," says a senior Bush aide. "It's not the way he sees this. He wants the best and brightest."
The meeting where President Bush decided to bring in Gates was itself a well-guarded secret. On the Sunday before the elections, Gates, the president of Texas A&M University and the deputy national-security adviser and CIA director in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, drove two hours from College Station, Texas, to the small town of McGregor, where he switched from his own car to one driven by White House chief of staff Josh Bolten. Gates was quietly taken to President George W. Bush's office on his ranch at Crawford, where the two talked long enough to convince Bush that Gates was the man to replace Rumsfeld. Guests at the presidential ranch, assembled for the 60th birthday of First Lady Laura Bush and the First Couple's 29th wedding anniversary, didn't even notice Gates's coming and going.
Once he assumes his new post, Gates is likely to welcome the Iraq Study Group recommendations as if they were his own, while Rumsfeld would have been a surefire obstacle to whatever Baker and the team proposed, reports Newsweek. Baker signed on to the study group only after getting Bush 43's personal assurance that the White House wanted him to take the job. (According to a source knowledgeable about the study group who requested anonymity discussing sensitive negotiations, Baker also received a backstage promise that Rumsfeld would stay out of the way as the commissioners interviewed generals and diplomats.) "There are going to be some things in this report that the administration is not going to be excited about," Baker tells Newsweek, choosing his words carefully.
Elsewhere in the cover package, Darman reports on how Democrat Nancy Pelosi, soon to be the first female Speaker of the House, developed her strategy for claiming the Speaker's gavel by consulting corporate America-not your typical liberal play. After the party's disastrous defeat in the 2004 elections, she began casting around for fresh ideas on how the Democrats could reintroduce themselves to the American people. "I decided to go to the private sector," she tells Newsweek, "and ask them how to become No. 1." Through her staff, Pelosi found her way to a group of corporate-image consultants including high-tech entrepreneur Richard Yanowitch, computer-software marketer John Cullinane and Jack Trout, a marketing strategist who'd worked with big corporate clients like Merck and IBM. "I specialize in differentiation," Trout says. "I told her, 'That's your problem-you haven't found a way to differentiate the party from the Republican Party in a clear, simple way'." Trout encouraged Pelosi to take advantage of the weak points in Karl Rove's base-driven Republican strategy. "You've got to go the opposite way," he told her. "It's Marketing 101. Say 'We're about good governing for all, not a privileged few ... ' Bring back the big-tent idea."
(Read entire cover package at http://www.Newsweek.com.)
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061112/nysu008.html?.v=82
The Iraq Study Group is a bipartisan group of prominent Americans supported by four premier institutions. It is led by co-chairs James A. Baker, III, the nation’s 61st Secretary of State and Honorary Chairman of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and Lee H. Hamilton, former Congressman and Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
The other members of the study group include: Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Edwin Meese III , Sandra Day O'Connor, Leon E. Panetta, William J. Perry, Charles S. Robb, and Alan K. Simpson.
Reading is your friend!
When formed last spring by Congress, the Iraq Study Group was little known beyond elite circles of the U.S. foreign policy world.