The group of experts who advised the Iraq Study Group was assembled again to provide an assessment of progress in Iraq since the publishing of the ISG report and they’ve released their findings.
According to the WaPo, the group
concludes that political progress is “so slow, halting and superficial” and political fragmentation “so pronounced” that the United States is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago.
Can this possibly be a surprise to anyone? How can we be pouring all of this blood and money into a venture that clearly this administration has no intention of ending — they are kicking the can down the road for cynical and craven reasons at this point.
This is the same war that McCain is embracing and promising some non-defined victory from. His foreign policy is going to be all about keeping this going in spite of any costs to the armed forces, to the Treasury, to our reputation, to our nation.
Bush cherry-picked some of the recommendations of the ISG to try to show that he was listening to this high profile group. This time, BushCo was active in trying to deter a real reunion of the ISG, so I imagine there will be no cherry-picking here. Besides which, why bother to do much at all when you think all you need to do is run out the clock?