Baker-Hamilton Commission on Iraq reports

The New York Times reported on the disagreement between General Shinseki and Mr Rumsfeld in an article on February 28, 2003: “Mr Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, ‘wildly off the mark’.”

Mr Wolfowitz doesn’t look so darned brilliant any more.

The commission on Iraq also calls into question, in a round-about-way, the US State Department. The commissioners recommend new diplomatic initiatives and call the State Department’s “Hearts and Minds” element of the war (headed by Karen Hughes) a failure.

We've been asking "Where is Karen Hughes?" for months.

There has been some concern for at least two years by many of us who watch the State Department. President Bush abruptly fired Colin Powell as the Secretary of State on November 15, 2004. To be totally accurate, the Washington Post reported at the time that Powell had been told to resign by the president’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

That public display of disaffection followed a strange phase that included Secretary of State Powell making the case before the UN that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. When WMD did not appear in Iraq, some said Powell had been “used” by the administration.

Then we have the saga of the new Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice. I’ll try not to harp on her too much but I will tell you this: when Secretary of State Rice heard about the disaster of Katrina in New Orleans, she was buying shoes at Ferragomo. That night she went to a Broadway show. The next day she was hitting tennis balls with Monica Selles.

In July 2006, the US Secretary of State was scheduled to go to Vietnam. We cared about this trip to Vietnam for many reasons; not the least of which was that the Communist government had been holding an American citizen, Mrs Thuong N. "Cuc" Foshee, without charges, medical care or legal council for over a year. We had high hopes that the Secretary of State would encourage her hosts in Vietnam to rapidly release Mrs Foshee.

But Secretary of State Rice cancelled her mission to Vietnam last July because of the pressing business of the war between Israel and Hezbollah - even though she made it all the way to Malaysia at just about the same time she was supposed to be in Vietnam.

In fact, that July trip by the Secretary of State was supposed to be a diplomatic mission to Japan, China, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.

All this diplomacy never happened, save the Malaysia piece. Given recent events in North Korea and the difficult decisions to be made now, would that July trip have paid some dividends?

Perhaps.