The Looming Irrelevancy Looms No More

The way I see it, any actions taken in the aftermath of the "bi-partisan" Iraq Study Group report will result in the Democrats being forced to share at least some of the ownership of Mr. Bush's war.

The conventional wisdom -- at this point -- is saying otherwise:

The bipartisan nature of the report -- and the fact that Baker was secretary of state for Bush's father -- will make it difficult for the White House to ignore. By endorsing the critics' view of the war, the report will also help incoming Democratic congressional leaders frame the debate over Iraq as a disaster largely of the administration's making.

In a lengthy preamble to the recommendations titled "Assessment," the report gives a dispassionate account of the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq, echoing books and news reports that the administration had previously criticized as one-sided or overly negative. The report's description of the violence in Iraq, which amounts to an attack on the administration's understanding of the facts on the ground, will likely set the new baseline for how the Iraq conflict is portrayed. ...

The report is replete with damning details about the administration's inept handling of Iraq. It notes, for instance, that only six people in the 1,000-person embassy in Baghdad can speak Arabic fluently. It recounts how the military counted 93 acts of violence in one day in July, when the group's own reexamination of the data found 1,100 acts of violence. "Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes discrepancy with policy goals," the report says. ...

And then there is this:

Administration officials yesterday gamely insisted that the report is not a criticism of the administration's approach. White House spokesman Tony Snow said many issues raised in the report are being discussed and addressed by the administration. "You're asking if that is a repudiation of policy," he told reporters. "No, it's an acknowledgment of reality."