Bush Spurns ISG Lifeline

President Bush's public response to the proposals in the Iraq Study Group's report is typical.

When he said yesterday "I don't think that Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton expect us to accept every recommendation", he showed that he hadn't read the ISG report. Or even the report's executive summary, where it plainly said that the ideas were intended to be a comprehensive approach to the failing U.S. endeavor in Iraq.

Baker and Hamilton re-iterated yesterday that the report was not designed to be "cherry-picked." For good reason:

"Cherry-picking ideas and sending them into the bowels of the stovepiped bureaucracy to execute will result in more of the same uncoordinated, differing priorities, mess," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former Middle East mediator for the Bush administration.

Bush keeps perverse counsel as a matter of course, and will likely disregard the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission in any case.

At the risk of whatever legacy he can salvage for himself at this point.

Bush is sabotaging the establishment plan to rescue him as painlessly as possible from his disastrous Iraq blunder. Self-destruction is clearly still his guiding principle.