After a war longer than WWII, Bush wants to hear an evaluation?

[kentuck]

The ISG came out with its report a week or so ago - about two years too late. Bush says he was waiting on a couple of reports from his Pentagon and the State Dept before he can make a decision. It's been almost 4 years - longer than WWII - and he needs a report to know what to do?? In four more years, he may discover that people have actually been dying in this blunder? A couple of years after that, he may find out that it was his decision?

[babylonsister]

1. He's waiting for the 'right' report to come in. Also claimed he

wants Gates to get familiarized with his job. Dragging his heels while people are being blown up. But he obviously doesn't care.

[ladywnch]

3. the 'right' report is EXACTLY what he is waiting for

when someone finally gets around to handing him a report that reaffirms what he already thinks/believes THEN he will 'carefully' consider it before announcing it as the 'new way forward'...(formerly known as 'staying the course').

Let the echo chamber ring!

[stillcool]

2. oil contracts=job done

t's still about oil in Iraq
A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.
By Antonia Juhasz, ANTONIA JUHASZ is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time."
December 8, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/a...
WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.
Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply to all the country's oil fields,Iraq has to amend its constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by the central government.

This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law."

This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.
Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president) explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.
Much to the deep frustration of the U.S. government and American oil companies, that law has still not been passed.
In July, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in Baghdad that oil executives told him that their companies would not enter Iraq without passage of the new oil law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security when deciding whether to go into business in Iraq.