Hard on Baker

Dean Barnett takes a serious whack at James Baker along with his "findings" as the ISG recommendations move ever closer to becoming official. Whether deserved or not I personally think he's a little hard on Baker personally, though there is no lack of 2 x 4's with which the recommendations don't deserve pummelling:

WE KNOW WHO’S GOING to love the Baker Commission recommendations. The Democrats at home who think getting out of Iraq is the only thing that matters will jump aboard the report as an intellectual life raft. Bereft of any ideas of their own for the past five years, Democrats will seize on the report as cover for getting our illiterate children in the armed forces home.

But the Iranian mullahs will be even happier. The Baker Commission report will give them the same feeling that Hitler got in Munich – these men will not fight. They will see a solid chunk of the American body politic eager to sell out an ally while making concessions to our enemies without requiring those enemies to fire a single shot.

But here’s the killer part: Even if President Bush does the right thing and shoves this report in a part of James Baker’s anatomy where the sun don’t shine, the Commission will still do incalculable harm. The media, the Democrats and even many Republicans have already given the Baker Commission the sheen of omniscience once wrongly bestowed upon the 9/11 Commission. Regardless of the obtuseness of the Baker Commission’s recommendations, they will be hailed as genius and indisputable by wide swaths of the public.

And America will have her "honor" and her soldiers will come home. But I wonder, will the lives we save in soldiers be less than what we risk giving Iran and Syria a new free hand in Iraq and elsewhere in the ME?