-- While the MSM are heralding the ISGR as the Second Coming, we should remember that ISG members are unelected and will never be held accountable for their suggestions. Some of their recommendations reflect their lack of accountability, such as that we should increase the number of U.S. troops training Iraqi forces from 3,000 or 4,000 to 10,000 to 20,000. On what hard facts are they basing a recommendation that has a 100 percent fudge factor? Plus, if we get those additional troops from combat brigades in Iraq and we're already "perilously close to defeat," won't the reduction in our combat forces draw us perilously closer to defeat?

-- But nowhere is the ISG's lack of accountability better demonstrated than in its casual acknowledgment that its own proposals may not work, but we must try them anyway. Lee Hamilton said, "No course of action in Iraq is guaranteed to stop a slide toward chaos. Yet, in our view, not all options have been exhausted." Where is it written that we must try every idea, no matter how foolish, like negotiating with nations -- Iran and Syria -- that are dedicated to our destruction and who are behind much of the violence and ethnic strife in Iraq?

-- On that point, how can James Baker seriously argue that if Iran refuses to cooperate, we can expose it as an enemy of peace and turn the world against it? If the world -- including the American left -- isn't already convinced the Iranian regime is evil, then redundant evidence will not persuade it. Even if the appeasers were temporarily disabused of their misplaced trust, all it would take to turn them back toward Ahmadinejad is another one of his "thoughtful" love letters to the American people.

-- But what might even be worse is if Iran were to accept our offer, agree to negotiate, then make false promises the ISG would doubtlessly recommend we rely on.

-- Why is it that the ISG bends over backward to give the benefit of every doubt to the bad guys (Iran, Syria) and goes out of its way to undercut the good guys (Israel and the Iraqi voters)?

-- The ISG says we should withdraw most of our troops by early 2008. Why then? What happens if our efforts to train Iraqi troops haven't sufficiently succeeded by then? Are we bound to withdraw then anyway since the omniscient ISG chose that arbitrary date?

-- Why did President Bush shoot himself in the foot by appointing committee member Robert Gates secretary of defense?