Baker & Co Inane Second-Rate Gran'pa's Engendering Surrender?

Mark Steyn has brilliantly distilled the ISG for what it is, a mixtum-gatherum of every placebo and nostrum available except common sense. First Mark notes the terrific squad of talented senior UN officials who for the moment are grabbing bench:

". . . the Support Group should call on the participation of the United Nations Secretary-General in its work. The United Nations Secretary-General should designate a Special Envoy as his representative . . ."

Indeed. But it needs to be someone with real clout, like Benon Sevan, the former head of the Oil for Food Program, who recently, ah, stepped down; or Maurice Strong, the Under-Secretary-General for U.N. Reform and godfather of Kyoto, who for one reason or another is presently on a, shall we say, leave of absence; or Alexander Yakovlev, the senior procurement officer for U.N. peacekeeping, who also finds himself under indictment -- er, I mean under-employed. There's no end of top-class talent at the U.N., now that John Bolton's been expelled from its precincts.

Not that there aren't a lot of interested carrion-corps in the carcass-munching menagerie collecting around and vultures above the remnants of a faltering democratic Iraq, but there is one notable exception:

"Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions -- return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it's in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys."

Instapundit notes that "looks like the sellout isn't selling."

Flopping Aces appreciates Steyn's crushing punch-line: "the reductio-ad-absurdum of diplomatic self-adulation: [Baker] has become less rational than Mahmoud Ahmedinejad." and then points out Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's characterization of the ISG Study as "an insult to the people of Iraq."

Steyn continues:

So there you have it: an Iraq "Support Group" that brings together the Arab League, the European Union, Iran, Russia, China and the U.N. And with support like that who needs lack of support? It worked in Darfur, where the international community reached unanimous agreement on the urgent need to rent a zeppelin to fly over the beleaguered region trailing a big banner emblazoned "YOU'RE SCREWED." For Dar4.1, they can just divert it to Baghdad.

Dar4.1 is the best description of the so-called international consensus I have read for many a moon. Encapsulates the feckless incompetence and hectoring impotence of Kofi Annan multiplied a hundredfold by condescending censorious inaction by everyone in the UN & EU arena, and endless lip-flapping by the chattering nabobs of niggling nitwittery. The system's broke, flat broke and en panne and broken down and no collection of fuddie-duddies recommending everyone except Israel into the fun and games---Israel gets to give Palestinians the right of return---are going to fix it. Not Ban-ni-Moon nor the fiats of the MSM nomenklaturas and their lap-preppies can conjure up a solution. Except surrender, which is what the ISG is trying to engender.

Powerline has a skeptical photo of Hillary and her comment "We need an Iraq Results Group" as indicating less than complete happiness with the ISG recommendations.

Jules Crittenden notes that George W. Bush, for one, is not going to be browbeaten by a collection of has-beens who never ventured out of the Green Zone.

Despite the insects buzzing in his ears and the mongrels barking at his heels, GWB is still a majority of one.