This quote is from Josh Marshall's TPM, hope it hasn't already been posted. I absolutely believe it. Baker has been brought in, without having to resolve any conflict of interest or be accountable to anyone but Bush, to save Bush's ass. By fall, the appearance will be that we are about to leave Iraq. This "appearance" will be bought at any cost.
"Now, along these lines and the Baker mission, once in a blue moon, TPM runs a guest post. And this is one of those cases. The following is from someone whom, after some lengthy negotiation, I've agreed to call a 'former high-level Democratic executive branch appointee.'
Here's this person's take on the Baker mission ...
Aspiring to the light touch under dire circumstances, perhaps we can say of Iraq what Casey Stengel said about one of his Mets third basemen: “He’s got third base so screwed up, nobody can play it right.” Iraq is the site of so many mistakes, who can the Administration call on to win the game?
The answer is, as so often before in Bush Family history, Jim Baker. Only the naive can think his mission – special part-time job (so conflicts of interest will not need to be disclosed), with plane, staff, and direct report to President – is about renegotiating Iraq’s debt obligations, as if he were restructuring a company’s balance sheet. This company is deep into chapter 7. It loses vast sums of money a day. Its few, severely impaired assets have been spoken for many times over. Its employees are impoverished and barely working. Its political liabilities are burgeoning: indeed it is the principal risk to the parent company’s future. If Iraq could be liquidated, it would be. But instead the proprietors need to abandon it.
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