Bill Maher calls him the Bush Family "Consigliere". For me, that's a perfect title for the man. Baker has headed, since March, the Iraq Study Group. Now, this sounds like something you took part in during the highschool years but don't let the title fool you. As I blogged about here, in August, The Iraq Study group was created by Republican Frank Wolf, representative of VA. Wolf is the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the State Department. Wolf created the group after a trip to Iraq. A good read about the beginnings of the group entitled "A Higher Power" is still online by Richard Dreyfuss, which can be found here. This group is a BI-PARTISAN group. This can not be stressed enough. The co-chair is former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. I would like to suggest you skimmers suck it up and read the entire acticle. Its got a shit-load aka a plethora of info regarding how the group was assembled, how they were chosen, etc. Also a lil dirt on the Shub, his daddy and Jimbo Baker.
Any who..I have had news alerts setup on various news sites on this Iraq group since I heard about it in the beginning of the summer. There were a few hits here and there, but not alot,other than the extensive read by Dreyfuss. Then suddenly starting last week, the alerts have been rolling in like an avalanche. Jimmy Baker seems to be on an unofficial yet highly informative speaking tour about the ISG(Iraq Study Group, keep up please).
Informative only in the fact that they are wrapping it up and preparing the "paper" on their findings. Its like a pre-concert tour, whip up the fans type of thing going on right now. The thing is...
The bastards won't release their "findings" until after the election. WTF is that about? But Baker has been making the news rounds and nothing makes this more evident than this phrase being tossed about: No Magic Bullet for Iraq. The CNN writeup and the WaPo writeup both use those 5 words. The WaPo has this from Co-chair Hamiltonr: "We will write our own report. It will not be written in the White House or in the Congress, and it will not be submitted to somebody to amend or modify,"This will be the report of the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group. We are going to be do our best to reach a consensus but I can't make a guarantee...We will make foreign policy recommendations,"
But to be clear, this is Bakers baby. He is after all, the Consigliere. His fingerprints will be all over this sucka. I also like this name for the Iraq Study Group: The Baker Boys..catchy no? Goes right along with the current pre-release tour currently making the rounds.
HuffPo's Mark Weisbrot has a good writeup about what might or might not be in this report and how the Shrub will accept their recommendations. Linkage to his piece is here.
Because, when its all said and done..the Shrub is the Decider..and also the signing statement queen I might add. But thats for another post.
Tags: Politics,Iraq Study Group,James Baker
