The Baker Commission Report

I give this article by Werther at indybay.org high marks for its wit and predictive wisdom: A Sneak Peak At the Baker Commission Report. Werther skewers the members of the Commission, then goes on to predict the contents of the report with all the bravado and cynicism one person can muster. I fear his predictions will all come true.

Baltimore's Bromo-Seltzer towerAs we have stated in the past, the reports of government commissions serve their intended purposes best when they act as a cover-up disguised as an exposé. The 9/11 Commission Report is the classic and best-known recent example, with Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton giving bravura performances in pretended gravitas, with only an occasional lapse into imbecility by John Lehman or Jim Thompson. [1] The Robb-Silverman Report, by contrast, was so shakily constructed, and the co-chairmen's dissembling so unconvincing, that their "investigation" should have been accompanied by the music track of "Three Blind Mice."

In the wake of the human and fiscal wreckage of the Iraq fiasco, all Washington trembles in anticipation at the release of the Baker-Hamilton Commission's report on Iraq. Unlike many other commissions, its lucubrations have been held in camera, the method favored by chief Bush family consigliere and fixer James Baker.

A run-down of its other principals should give us a strong indication where this operation is heading. Aside from Baker, there is as co-chairman once again Lee Hamilton, a past master at these performances. As the éminence beige of the Democratic foreign policy apparatus, Hamilton has been participating in high-level cover-ups of government shenanigans stretching back to the Iran-Contra affair.

Read the whole thing as they say.