It's a Civil War, Stupid

Thus far, the vice president would appear to be up to his normal tricks. Hersh writes: "The Administration's planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. . . .

"A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the C.I.A. analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it. The White House's dismissal of the C.I.A. findings on Iran is widely known in the intelligence community. Cheney and his aides discounted the assessment, [a] former senior intelligence official said."

The Iraq Study Group

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.

"While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American withdrawal. . . .

"President Bush is not bound by the commission's recommendations, and during a trip to Southeast Asia that ended just before Thanksgiving, he made it clear that he would also give considerable weight to studies under way by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his own National Security Council. . . .

"But privately, administration officials seem deeply concerned about the weight of the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission. . . .

"Mr. Bush spent 90 minutes with commission members in a closed session at the White House two weeks ago 'essentially arguing why we should embrace what amounts to a "stay the course" strategy,' said one commission official who was present."

Robin Wright writes in The Washington Post: "In the history of U.S. foreign policy, there's been nothing like it: a panel outside government trying to bail the United States out of a prolonged and messy war. . . .

"The innocuously titled Iraq Study Group . . . has evolved into a parallel policy establishment over the past eight months."

But were the group's conclusions foreordained by how its members were chosen?

Wright writes: "The panel was deliberately skewed toward a centrist course for Iraq, participants said. Organizers avoided experts with extreme views on either side of the Iraq war debate.

"Neoconservatives, who supported and crafted much of the original Iraq strategy, say the panel was stacked against them."