The Baker Bush bailout group

I'm afraid Digby is on the right track in Poppy's Last Rescue 11/13/06:

I hope people understand that James Baker and Robert Gates are in the Bush family business not the "wise old sage who will do what's right for the country" business. Indeed, their entire lives have been devoted to bailing out Bushes.(And they haven't always been successful. Jimmy may have pulled one out for Junior in Florida, but he was called back, much against his will, to get Poppy re-elected and failed.) Their job is simply to try to save Junior from ignominy and that is not necessarily what is in the best interest of the US or Iraq.

It is clear that no matter what this country does now in Iraq, it is impossible to "fix" in any substantial way. ... And it's very, very easy to see how it can lurch out of control in a dozen different ways.

James Baker and Robert Gates and Joe Lieberman aren't magicians. And they are not going to let anybody say they and Junior "lost Iraq." Don't get your hopes up about these "grown-ups." They are just looking for a way to keep Bush (and in joe's case, himself) from looking like a loser - and real withdrawal (as opposed to cosmetic) is not going to accomplish that. Everything they do for the next two years will be to save Bush's face and the Republican party, period.

John Aravosis is also skeptical of what the Baker Secret Plan to End the War group (aka, Iraq Study Group) is up to:

This is a trap. Democrats cannot - can not - own the administration's current course in Iraq. If Democrats buy off on a policy that they know is not the right policy, then they will be buying off on future failure in Iraq. They will own Bush's bad policy. And that is insane. If the bipartisan group can't come up with a real plan, a good plan, the best plan, then let the Republicans in the group come up with their own wacky plan that will fail. The Democrats can issue a dissent that respectfully says they disagree, and why. And when all hell breaks loose over the next two years, the Dems can say "I told you so." [This could easily be quoted out of context to sound like celebrating misfortune; but I read Aravosis as saying that the Dems should not agree to some measure they know is more cosmetic than practical.]

The last thing Democrats need is to hand George Bush some bipartisan approbation of his failed Iraq policy so that, in the future, he can say we all own Iraq, warts and all. We all don't own Iraq, it's his disaster, his failed state. And nothing we try is going to work because it's already too late - Iraq is lost. Bush had his chance, and he failed.

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