Iraq Commission Disappoints....

Well if you had low expectations concerning the contribution of the Iraq Commission you might still have been disappointed by its Report. The primary value of the report may well be in its appraisal of the Iraq policy and how much domestic political concerns have apparently affected it. It was startling to see the images and sheer levels of violence portrayed in the Report which appear in stark contrast to the information which has previously been provided to the press and public.
The public would have long ago concluded that Iraq had fallen into a grave and divisive civil war from which there is no apparent recovery based on the sheer breathtaking level of violence. The public would have had a very different reaction to the costs of the war in terms of Iraqi deaths and casualties.. One finds it difficult to imagine an entire world of governments and resources could not have developed a more effective and less deadly method to dismantle the puny military under Saddam's control at the time of the invasion.
The commission disappoints in its primary focus on the domestic political process by calling for resolution of the deployment issue in advance of the presidential primaries in 2008. There is a body of well founded opinion in the American public that much of what has transpired in Iraq: the timing of the invasion, the desperate use of flawed intelligence, the uncorroborated assumption of a Saddam role in 9/11; was in its totality dominated by the re-election of President Bush. This, if even minimally true, would be an omission of Presidential responsibility of an historic proportion. However, the Commission essentially legitimizes this approach by its own politically inspired sense of urgency-- a premature politically motivated onset to this war could certainly be made worse by an artificial timetable for resolution similarly tied to the election cycle. All in all, the new Congress should be even more interested in developing it's own factual basis for Iraq policy development and evaluation--the national mandate of November, 2006 seems to require it.