Dan Senor, a former administration spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said that in conversations with administration officials, they had dismissed many of the report’s recommendations as “not terribly realistic from an operational standpoint.”
He said former colleagues had told him they felt comforted by the recognition that there were no good options, because despite all of the intellect brought to the endeavor, the members of the panel had failed to make the leap from strategy to implementation. “It’s easy to suggest these steps in theory, but we haven’t been able to figure out the how,” Mr. Senor said. “Now, neither have these 10 wise men and woman.”
First the honesty. When has anyone in the Bush administration said that "there were no good options." For quite some time "stay the course" was painted as a delightfully wonderful option which was unearthing huge quantities of ponies.
Second the priorities. What's important to the people in the Bush administration isn't actually finding the pony in Iraq, it's not being blamed for the disaster. Now if I were presiding over a catastrophic pony hunt which had killed thousands and thousands of people, and a bunch of "wise men and women" tapped me on the shoulder and said hey, kid, here's how you find the pony, I would be very pleased. I would be glad that maybe someone had helped me find a way to end the catastrophe.
Members of the Bush administration, however, would rather continue with the catastrophe than have to admit that maybe someone else has more of a clue . They are comforted by the fact that there's no way to find the pony, even though they, you know, started looking for the damn thing to begin with.
These are people with broken brains and souls.