Centerfield

These two are destroying their credibility. The Study Group's recommendations are common sense approaches to prevent a regional crisis. The time has long passed to add more troops. The time has long passed to reverse the course and succeed. What is success at this point? There are refugees pouring out of Iraq, but Iran and Syria don't have interests that we can shake out. No one is saying we need to appease or kiss Iran's ass. The Study Group isn't suggesting we give up anything to these two rogue countries.

In my judgement McCain is throwing his chances for the Presidency out the window.

Brian, have you got any reliable sources to back up your contention that refugees are pouring out of Iraq? I have not heard anything about this.

Actually I read something similar that Turkey, in particular has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees, primarily Kurds. Unfortunately I cannot recall the source...

I haven't heard a single thing about unrest in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, never mind masses of refugees. I would love to see some reliable sources to confirm them.I sure hope no one is spreading bad rumors.

OK, here's what I was able to find from the 10/22/06 Washington Post:

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported this month that at least 914,000 Iraqis have left their homes since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, with more than third fleeing since an increase in sectarian bloodshed at the start of this year.

Syria and Jordan have received a majority of the displaced who left Iraq, with at least 40,000 Iraqis arriving in Syria every month for the last four months, the agency said. More than 500,000 Iraqis live in Syria, many of them refugees like al-Mawla who fled after 2003.

According to a report released this month by the UNHCR, the U.N. Children's Fund and the World Food Program, 48 percent of the Iraqi refugees in Syria are children, 90 percent fled because of security fears, 58 percent are Shiite and a majority are from Baghdad.

It doesn't say how big a majority. FWIW, Iraq is a nation of about 26 million people.

CBS says 100k per month, according to AP

Now I wish they WERE bad rumors. Yikes!

McCain/Lieberman 2008...

I'm just saying.

Politics notwithstanding, I think McCain and Lieberman are simply trying to point out that a lot of what's coming out of the ISG is empty, smooth-sounding rhetoric.

The 100K/month numbers are seriously exaggerated ("AP" is a clue there) but the outflow is real. They include the tens of thousands of regime Baathists who fled to Syria with the fall of Saddam.

Brian, as my post suggests, I don't see how any ISG recommendation will contain the militias.

There's also an estimated 300k to 500k "internally displaced persons" (refugees who stay in the country) in our province, Karbala, alone. We don't know exactly how many, of course, but the population swung from about 780k to 1.4M, and we suspect that the vast majority came from IDPs. Luckily, the Iraqi Director-General for IDPs in Karbala is a first-rate fellow, and we have a plan to mitigate the effect this is having on the security situation.