Iraq Survey Group reports

James Baker and his 'august' colleagues have submitted their eagerly awaited report to actual public scrutiny after a week of leaks.

My reaction to this exercise in preening aged past their prime prima donnas proving they still matter? Ignore it and them for it reeks of defeatism and the old style of diplomacy that still infests certain places like the State Department and the United Nations. Places in which the process of talking is seen as actual progress. Even while one or both sides of these current talks re-arm and break the agreements they have signed in the past that were hailed as singular breakthroughs towards lasting peace. Does Baker remember his stint at Israel-PLO peace talks? Or the debacle called the Balkans in which the likes of Milosevic used the peace process pushed forward by the US, UN, and Europe to carry out his genocidal plans?

President Bush should say some nice things to Baker, Hamilton, and the others who cobbled together this report. Once the lights and cameras are turned off, he should then shuck it into the circular file cabinet while telling the military forces to keep taking the fight to the enemy when they slither out of their spider-holes to chase the 'retreating' Americans.

The United States and the United Kingdom did not throw in the towel and start talking about consulting with Germany about the future of Europe that cold winter in 1944 when Joachim Piper and the panzers he spearheaded seemed on the verge of victory against Allied forces. No, the Allied forces marshalled the willpower and the forces needed to repulse Hitler's last gamble on keeping the noose from tightening around his Thousand Year Reich. And by May of 1945 it was over for the Germans.