Free Republic

We're about to enter another of the regular blogger conference calls held by John McCain. This will, of course, be the first since his surprisingly strong victory over Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican field. He starts off by noting that he is "obviously very pleased" with the results. McCain credits his straight talk on the stump in New Hampshire. He has nothing much to offer for the Democratic Party result, maybe one of the few who haven't opined on it. McCain tells a story about hardening his resolve in a summer trip to Iraq with Lindsey Graham....

I guess I missed the whole point of the Baker Commission. My bad. As Tony Snow summarized the Group’s mission, “The one thing that they thought was absolutely important (was) to rebuild a sense of national unity. And that (was) their overriding objective.” Assuming the Report accomplished this critical goal, I guess we can all feel better about ourselves – as we march, united, into catastrophe. Yesterday, the self-esteem movement reached its zenith. A nation and a government, eager to feel better about themselves, rounded up a passel of political has-beens to offer policy prescriptions that we could all support....

FROM METTERNICH to JIM BAKER-- The ISG report assumes we can't win in Iraq so we shouldn't try; the reality is the US effort is slowly and steadily succeeding - the longer democracy is guarded in Iraq, the stronger it will root itself in the region. For his part, Baker argued--wrongly--that Saddam Hussein should be spared in the wake of Desert Storm; tolerated Saddam's savage suppression of a Shia revolt we incited, and grudgingly- belatedly- acquiesced in our protection of Kurdish refugees. One of many tragedies of our experience in Iraq is the incompetence of the administration's occupation policy ....

WASHINGTON (APUPI) The media and political pundits lauded the preliminary results of the months-long commission to determine the true ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle today. "This has been a troubling national issue, since the nation's founding. Several legislatures have attempted to proclaim the value of pi, in order to simplify mathematics for our students, but the effort has always been viewed as partisan and controversial," stated the introduction to the initial report, released today. It was a long-standing controversy, viewed by many as a policy quagmire, that has been finally almost been laid to rest...

When the MSM wants to be particularly nasty toward President Bush, it breaks out the allusions to his dissolute younger days. Witness this week's 'Time' cover story 'Can Bush find an exit?,' which manages a two-fer: a reference to W's hard-drinking past and an allusion to him as nothing less than a drug addict.The story's very first lines: "George Bush has a history of long-overdue U-turns. He waited until he woke up, hung over, one morning at 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard...

From what we know so far, the Baker Commission is going to recommend that we cut troop levels in Iraq, attempt to make nicey-nice with our determined enemies in Iran and Syria, and demand Israeli concessions to serve as the deus ex machina to bring about peace in our time. In a word, oy vey!Coming from a commission headed by James Baker, the latter recommendation is especially jarring. During his tenure as Secretary of State, I believe his most famous quote regarding Israel and the Jews was (and pardon his French), “Fuck the Jews. They didn’t vote for us anyway.”...

Can Iran help us bail out of Iraq? Maybe - but we'd better take a hard look at the price. The idea has reportedly been floated via a draft report to the Iraq Study Group (headed by former Secretary of State James Baker), which calls for a "dialogue" with Iran as well as Syria. Along the same lines, British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said Iran could be a "partner" with the West if it did not develop a bomb. Presumably, we'd ask Iran to help stabilize the situation in Iraq, curb the Shiite militias and encourage the Iraqi government...

Cut out of the loop? The US Baker - Hamilton Commission has consulted widely trying to find solutions to the carnage in Iraq. But they have failed to consult with Poland, which has the third largest foreign force in the country. Bogdan Zaryn reports 20.11.06 Over 136 US politicians, military experts, journalist and ambassadors from the UK, Turkey and Jordan (but not Poland) have been asked to take part in a special advisory body to come up with a quick solution in Iraq. But where does this leave Poland with the third largest contingent in Iraq after Britain and the...