RSS- Supreme Court oral arguments to be heard on April 25 about presidential immunity for official acts
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“The Advisor” 5 August, 2006
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I don’t expect that this forts will be useful. Maybe they look god from outside but what about troops. Most of population in iraqis border provinces are sunnis as for example al-Anbar or shiites as Maysan or Kurds. Most forces of “iraqis army” are formation of kurdish or shiites militia. Can they get trust of for example sunnis in Anbar. I don’t think so if I’m correct sunnis in Iraq treat shiites and Kurdish as traitors who help US. Now Americans and “iraqis army” can control only this territory on which they stand the rest are in iraqis resistance power. Kurds works on their own so it can be sure that forts which will be built on border with Turkish state will be destroyed by Turkish army if they want to deal with Ocalan organisation
Have you seen “A Higher Power — James Baker puts Bush’s Iraq policy into rehab.” by Robert Dreyfuss?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.dreyfuss.html
“Besides Baker, the bipartisan task force is co-chaired by former congressman Lee H. Hamilton, the Indiana Democrat and foreign-policy wise man. Working with a quartet of think tanks–the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for the Study of the Presidency, and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy–Baker and Hamilton recruited a star-studded task force, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans include Robert M. Gates, the former CIA director; Sandra Day O’Connor, the retired Justice; Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming senator; and Edwin Meese III, attorney general under President Reagan. The Democrats are William Perry, President Clinton’s secretary of defense; Charles Robb, the former Virginia senator; Leon Panetta, Clinton’s chief of staff; and Vernon Jordan, the lawyer and Friend of Bill.
“Since April, operating almost entirely under the radar, the task force has spawned four working groups, recruiting scores of U.S. experts on Iraq and the Middle East to look at military and security issues, Iraqi politics, reconstruction, and the regional and strategic environment surrounding the war. Among the participants in these working groups are former ambassadors and State Department officials, intelligence officers from the CIA and other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, and think-tank denizens from the RAND Corporation, the Nixon Center, the Henry L. Stimson Center, the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the Middle East Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and others, along with a panel of retired military officers: three army generals, an air-force general, and an admiral.
“But according to all accounts, the Iraq Study Group is Baker’s show, with the assembled cast of characters there to give Baker the bipartisan, protective coloration he needs. ‘Jim Baker is the gatekeeper,’ one task-force participant told me, insisting on anonymity. ‘He’s by far the most dynamic, and everyone else is intimidated by him.’
“And Baker is keeping his cards very close to his chest. “He’s very secretive, he keeps his distance, and he compartmentalizes everything, which is not a bad way to organize a political conspiracy,’ says another member of one of the working groups.”
Could this make a difference or is it much too little, much too late?
And not necessarily involve the right people?