When You Use The Same Politicians That Your Father Did, All You Get Is More Of The Same

Here's an editorial by Daniel Pearl, confirming that bad intelligence is followed by more bad intelligence:

THINGS that start badly seldom end well. And the Baker-Hamilton findings start badly, with the commission’s wholly unproven assertion that Iran and Syria have an “interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.”

It is astonishing that not a shred of evidence is advanced to support this seminal statement. That may be because all the evidence is to the contrary: from the beginning, Iran and Syria have been undermining American and Iraqi efforts to bring order and stability to Iraq.

The matter is important, because an approach to the dictators in Iran and Syria would be seen throughout the region, and especially in Iraq itself, as a sign of American weakness and resignation. A hat-in-hand plea for help from our adversaries will only confirm their belief that a policy of fueling the insurgency with weapons, money, intelligence and foreign fighters is working.

Missing from the report is any serious reflection on the president’s goal of encouraging the development of representative government in the despotic Arab world, an objective that would be scuttled by the report’s proposed “diplomatic offensive.”

President Bush has said to the world, “If you stand for freedom, we stand with you.” In pushing for deals with the dictators in Iran and Syria, the study group has said to Mr. Bush, as James Baker once shamefully said to those pleading for intervention in Bosnia to stop the genocide of defenseless Muslims, “We don’t have a dog in that fight.”