Hawks blast ISG report

Washington Post:

Steady condemnation from conservatives for the Iraq Study Group report may be providing some cover to the Bush administration as it completes its own review of strategy in Iraq, apparently with little enthusiasm for the panel's prescription of U.S. troop withdrawal and dialogue with Syria and Iran.

The criticism of the panel, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), has burst forth from the leading institutions of the right: the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard; conservative talk radio; and scholars at some of Washington's top think tanks.

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Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers have embraced the panel's report, but the almost uniformly negative reaction from some of Bush's strongest conservative supporters means the president may have some political flexibility to depart from the group's major recommendations, according to some GOP operatives.

Notably fueling the skepticism has been Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has raised pointed questions about the Baker-Hamilton panel's unwillingness to prescribe more troops, as McCain has urged, and its embrace of a regional conference with Syria and Iran.

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And the Baker-Hamilton group, neoconservatives came to believe, was stacked against them from the beginning, both in the composition of the panel and in the panel's choices of experts to hear from. Neoconservatives also complained that the group sought out the views of Iran and Syria but did not speak to senior officials of such allies as Israel and Turkey.

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Or the Kurds. They also ignored the advice of most knowledgeable military experts. Bush will still be getting that advice from Centcom and the Joint Chiefs. The failure to get input from these key groups made the recommendations suspect to begin with. Democrats have a long history of second guessing the military and ignoring their advice. They certainly were able to screw up the war in Vietnam by following that practice. In comparison, Bush has consistently followed the advice of the military on the prosecution of the war and that has apparently disturbed the Democrats many of whom seem to want to lose this war. Their gloom and doom attitude is a gift to the enemy that we have too long indulged.