Galloway Vs Bob Ayres

[nekokate]

Not sure if this is in the archives yet, so I'm linking it...

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[faceless]

cool, do you know when this is from? It looks recent

[nekokate]

I'm not sure - I just came across it while doing a search.

[faceless]

It says it was uploaded in November 2006, so I'm guessing that's about right. Don't know how we've all missed it before though... well apart from those smug buggers who have seen it but not bothered to post!

[DavidGig]

They're referring to the Iraq Study Group Report ("Baker-Hamilton Report") that was released on Dec. 6, 2006 (shortly after the U.S. elections). Basically it said that the mess in Iraq was more serious than previously reported, and that its solution required a comprehensive approach to the whole situation in the Middle East -- Iran and Syria's concerns and aspirations, and of course the Palestinian occupation.

That final point of course doomed it, since the whole point of the neocon project was to remove any remaining sources of possible resistance to Zionism. The idea of putting pressure on Israel to come to terms with the Palestinians, or treating Iran as a rational player in the region with its own worries, were the last things neocons wanted to hear. They savaged it (Baker was called an anti-semite, etc.) and Bush, who had commissioned the study, ended up ignoring it.

It is interesting because the report was interpreted at the time as an attempt by the old-skool conservatives to take back control from the neocons. They failed then, but as the recent NIE on Iran shows, they haven't completely given up yet.

[Mandy]

Good find ..