THE ISG: No Jews Allowed! “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.” (Via Newsbeat 1).

UPDATE: No Kurds, either:

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani has angrily rejected the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group in the United States and warned of “grave consequences” if there is any delay in deciding the fate of the oil-rich region claimed by his people. Mr Barzani, president of the 15-year-old autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq and a staunch ally of the US, also criticised the ISG for not visiting his region, saying that was a “major shortcoming that adversely influenced the credibility of the assessment”.

Looks like the sellout isn’t selling.

ANOTHER UPDATE: XRLQ emails: “The message is clear: if you want the west to acknowledge you, issue fatwahs and blow stuff up.”

Yes, and that’s a bad incentive structure to create. God help the French if the Israelis take this lesson to heart and decide to out-Arab the Arabs. For that matter, God help Jim Baker.

Plus, this amusing comment:

If James Baker ran a bipartisan Blue-Ribbon panel tasked with saving social security, his commission would conclude that no real progress on social security was possible until Israel ceded the Golan Heights to Syria and made whatever concessions necessary to mollify Hamas.

When, exactly, did Baker turn into Jimmy Carter?

MORE: Meryl Yourish thinks it’s all a cunning plan: “James Baker has managed to draw quite a lot of ire away from Bush and towards himself. Why, you’d almost think it was deliberate. . . . I think we’ve all been had, and that the Iraq Study Group was never meant to be taken seriously.”