Snowed Under by Iraq Study Group Report

No one would accuse Jon Snow of being anything other than a steadfast critic of Bush, Blair and the Iraq war. Nightly, Channel 4 News greets bad news from Iraq with a certain smug satisfaction. Another nail in the political coffins of Messrs Bush & Blair.

Today‘s publication of The Iraq Study Group report had Jon Snow all excited. It’s recommendations were a clear repudiation of White House policy and could only be seen as a sharp rebuff to Bush & Co (incl. Blair).

So Channel 4 News had lined up the experts to express their views.

First was the compulsory interview with the retired American general. He liked the political recommendations in the report but thought the military recommendations were dangerous. His advice was that the Baker Commission should have confined itself to setting out the political objectives and leave it to the US military to design the appropriate tactics.

Then came a joint interview with a US-based Iranian expert and a former British Governor of two provinces in Southern Iraq.

The Iranian expert rubbished all the political recommendations - primarily stating that Iran & Syria would do nothing to help, resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict was not a viable objective and the elected Iraqi Government was incapable of achieving any progress.
The former British Governor agreed that most of the political recommendations were undeliverable, except for being a bit more optimistic about what might be achieved by the Iraqi Government.

In summary, the military man rubbished the military proposals in the Iraq Study Group Report, while the political experts rubbished the political recommendations. In short, they thought it a crock of shit.

Poor Snow looked suitably bewildered - his new favourite anti-Bush weapon had been neatly decommissioned in about 10 minutes.

Living proof that it’s an awful lot easier to look intelligent while asking questions than it is when you have to answer them.