The Baker Comission/Study Group

As pointed out here, the "Iraq Study Group" has a lot of studying to do, since it does not have any Iraq experts, or even Middle East ones. Here's a good article by Michael Kinsley at Slate, about why such groups are really formed.

There are many reasons to be cautious about this team (the presence of Ed Meese being only one of them). The New Yorker's George Packer writes:

The Republicans had their neoconservative spree and emerged this month from its smoking wreckage, in Iraq and at the polls, with nothing to steady them except the hope that two aging condottieri from the first Bush Presidency, James A. Baker III and Robert Gates, can lead the way out. These are the same men who, fifteen years ago, abandoned Afghanistan to civil war and Al Qaeda, allowed Saddam to massacre his own people, and concluded that genocide in the Balkans was none of America’s business

Christopher Hitchens also makes a good argument for why Baker might not be the best man for the job. And also recalls:

For millions of Iraqis, the betrayal of their uprising against Saddam in 1991 is something that they can never forget. They tend to bring it up, too, and to fear a repetition of it.

In all of this, one must feel truly sorry for the Iraqi people, who suffered through Saddam Hussein, the absurd Iran-Iraq war (back when Saddam was on the US side), the Gulf War, the supressed insurrection at its end, the UN sanctions, the 2003 invasion, and then this bungled occupation, which might lead to even worse to come. And sorry for the Iranian, Kuwaiti, and American victims of the entire thing too.

Finally, here's one of those "what-if" questions: Would Saddam have been dissuaded from invading Kuwait, back in 1990, if the Bush I administration had been really clear about the consequences? Instead, we had these quotes from the US embassador, meeting with Saddam shortly before the invasion:

"We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

How many lives might have been saved?