Of fruit salads and dogs' dinners

As co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, James A Baker III advises American President George W. Bush the report is not a "fruit salad" to be picked over, but a comprehensive strategy. In other words, all or nothing at all.

Baker was speaking on behalf of the distinguished members of the Group, having gleaned responses by Bush to the report mainly negative and that Bush had other reports to also consider coming from the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House Security Council. If Bush thinks an amalgamation of suggestions from four reports, likely coming from four different directions, will produce the right answers, then it will not be a fruit salad but a dog's dinner.

With much of the dust settling after the initial announcement by the Group, reactions to the findings were swift, if not incredulous. While Syria welcomed the report, Iraq was more circumspect, thinking that undue pressure blackmail some said was being applied on Iraqis, politicians, military personnel and civilians. The fear being that the Group was advocating a way out that was more like a cop out.

Iran, an included neighbour the Group suggested the US has talks with, saw no reason to accept any invitation to do so, although Bush had by then firmly squashed this proposal. And some US Republicans were claiming its 149 pages were a verbose way of demonstrating a humiliating defeat or climbdown.

The truth of the matter is Bush and his advisors see no practical way in which they can exit Iraq and still claim a victory, this being so important for the Bush legacy. Americans still remember with bitterness the humiliating escape from Vietnam after the loss of so many young lives, thereby demonstrating the futility of that war. They do not want the Iraq card marked the same way.