Iraq and a hard place: Listening to the newsers’ chatter about the report released by the Iraq Study Group yesterday, two things are apparent: Experts on all sides of the war have found a lot to criticize about the group’s suggestions for extricating the United States out of Iraq, — but no one (outside the White House) disagrees with their finding that the source of the problem is gross incompetence on the part of the Bush Administration and its neo-con advisers.

The Wasington Post’s front page story, titled “The Realists’ Repudiation Of Policies for a War, Region,” sums up the bitch slap delivered by the gray beards to the Bush Administration about its incompetent management of what has become the Iraq Civil War:

From the very first page, in which co-chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton scold that “our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people,” the bipartisan report is nothing less than a repudiation of the Bush administration’s diplomatic and military approach to Iraq and to the whole region…

Overall, it strongly suggests that Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have bungled diplomacy in the region with unrealistic objectives and narrow strategies.

And:

The report’s description of the violence in Iraq, which amounts to an attack on the administration’s understanding of the facts on the ground, will likely set the new baseline for how the Iraq conflict is portrayed.

“The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing,” the report warns.

The reason no one likes the ISG’s proposals for getting out of Iraq is that there is no way out that doesn’t risk the lives of thousands more innocent people.

A quick extraction is not possible. There are too many of our people there — not just the 100,000-plus military personnel but maybe another 100,000 civilian aid workers and private-sector contractors, plus the media. Evacuating these people would takes weeks, during which the they would be vulnerable as the level of violence among the insurgents escalates.

This is where George W. Bush has led the United States, to a choice between alternatives that are (paraphrasing Paul Krugman) “truly awful” and “much worse than that.”