WatchingAmerica.com conveys a bleak picture of how the rest of the world views the 79 recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. Whichever way you slice 'em and dice 'em, the report's 104 pages spell failure. Some of its harshest critics in America say they're a recipe for surrender. Abroad, they're seen as a tacit recognition of defeat.

From Buenos Aires to Berlin and from Brussels to Beijing, ISG was a devastating indictment of a multi-billion dollar boondoggle. In Tehran and Pyongyang, the two remaining capitals in the "axis of evil," and in Damascus, axis of lesser evil, cliches bristled about paper tigers and giants-with-feet-of-clay. Which is precisely why President Bush is not about to accept ISG's findings. President Bush sees himself as a lone Winston Churchill figure from the 1930s railing against his somnolent colleagues as they appeased Adolf Hitler. And like Churchill at the end of World War II, he was not elected to preside over the dissolution of the American empire.

Reinforcing President Bush's gut feeling this week was a paper by Gen. Chuck Wald, recently retired as EUCOM commander, and Chuck Vollmer, president of VII Inc., which does strategic analysis for the Pentagon. "With the entry of Iran into the equation," they wrote, "the next phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom could possibly include ... a major invasion of Iran and pro-Iranian forces against Western forces in the region and Israel, and/or a global energy crisis.

"Rather than planning withdrawal from Iraq," says the Wald-Vollmer paper, "we may be better served to plan for repositioning in this strategically important region. While withdrawal may be necessary in Iraq, withdrawal from the region would precipitate a global balance-of-power shift toward the Iran-Russia-China axis, which would be very detrimental for the energy dependent West."

For international opinion, the now free Iraqi media's description is even bleaker than the hourly recitation of the latest horrors on CNN and FOX. A lawless Baghdad "Descends into Chaos," said the headline in the newspaper Azzaman. "Trust levels between U.S. and Iraqi officers are low," said one frontpage story. "Baghdad is at the mercy of savage militias and gunmen have taken the law into their own hands. Kidnappings and assassinations are now on a scale never seen before. U.S. and Iraqi troops are powerless to restore any semblance of order anywhere in the city. Most of the carnage in the city goes unreported and the world sees only a fraction of the daily atrocities.

"Ethnic cleansing of an unheard of scale is underway," Azzaman said. "Entire neighborhoods are being emptied of members of opposing sects ... there are even reports of a few being burned alive. These forced evacuations have resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of people from one neighborhood to another or outside Baghdad. They leave behind their homes, careers and even personal belongings.

"Every day, conditions are worse than the day before. And amid this unprecedented surge of violence, Baghdadis have had to cope with chronic shortages of power, fuel, water and other basic essentials.

"And still there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The city's hapless inhabitants are more pessimistic about the future than ever before."

For President Bush, this was no time to go wobbly, as Margaret Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, urged Bush 41 not to do after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. A bigger danger than Iraq is Iran. It would stand to gain most from a U.S. defeat in Iraq. And Iran has also made clear it has no intention of abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

Israel is obsessed about Iran. Acute but understandable paranoia has replaced rational discourse. Lebanon was a disaster for Israel and Iraq a disaster for America. Some political soothsayers in Washington are predicting that President Bush is limbering up for the biggest U-turn in his political life. Think again. The French have an expression for what will probably come next -- "La Fuite En Avant." The literal translation doesn't hack it. Loosely interpreted, it means evading an issue with a headlong rush somewhere else.

Israel also has plenty of reasons for alarm in the ISG report. When Baker-Hamilton talk about a Palestinian settlement that includes the "right of return" for millions of Palestinians, this can only mean, in Israeli eyes, the destruction of the purely Jewish state, on par with the bats in president Ahmadinejad's belfry when he says the holocaust never happened and therefore Israel should be wiped off the map.

The major problem with "bombs away" over Iran's nuclear installations is that Ahmadinejad may be asking Allah for just that. It would coalesce worldwide Muslim opinion behind the latest "victim of Zionist American imperialism." It would also produce the kind of regional mayhem that Ahmadinejad sees as a precondition for the return to earth of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi. He's the 5-year-old boy who vanished 1,100 years ago who will lead the world back to prosperity under the banner of Islam.

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Analysis: U.N. appeal for U.S. leadership
United Nations (UPI) Dec 11 - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan gave a farewell address Monday that some observers called an attack on U.S. foreign policy. But he denies the accusation, countering it was instead an appeal for stronger leadership from Washington.

However it is characterized, it was definitely a plea for multilateralism and not the unilateralism of late demonstrated by Washington.

With only a few weeks before retirement, Annan listed five lessons he learned serving two-five year terms as secretary-general.

He told the Truman Library audience, in Independence, Mo., "We are all responsible for each other's security. Second. We can and must give everyone the chance to benefit from global prosperity. Third, both security and prosperity depend on human rights and the rule of law. Fourth, states must be accountable to each other, and to a broad range of non-state actors, in their international conduct."

He said "states can no longer -- if they ever could -- confront global challenges alone," a reference to the United States leading the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "We can only do to all these things by working together through a multilateral system, and by making the best possible use of ... the United Nations."

Annan said the fifth principle "flowed from the other four" he outlined.

"In fact, it is only through multilateral institutions that states can hold each other to account," he said.

"That makes it very important to organize those institutions in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong (and) applies particularly to the international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

"Developing countries should have a stronger voice in these bodies, whose decisions can have almost a life-or-death impact on their fate," the secretary-general said. "It also applies to the U.N. Security Council, whose membership still reflects the reality of 1945, not of today's world."

Annan said that was why he continues to push for reform of the 15-member council.

"But reform involves two separate issues. One is that new members should be added, on a permanent or long-term basis, to give greater representation to parts of the world which have limited voice today. The other, perhaps even more important, is that all council members, and especially the major powers who are permanent members, must accept the special responsibility that comes with their privilege, referring to Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

The council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests, he said. "It is the management committee, if you will, of our fledgling (global) collective security system."

Reform went down in defeat when the veto-holding permanent members couldn't agree with several proposals, one of which called for them to relinquish the veto, and increase the panel's size. They also couldn't agree on a formula or the countries for the increase.

"As President Truman said, 'the responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world,'" the secretary-general said. "He showed what can be achieved when the United States assumes that responsibility. And still today, none of our global institutions can accomplish much when the United States remains aloof. But when it is fully engaged, the sky's the limit."

The five lessons he learned, Annan said, were being left for his successor, the former South Korea Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, as five principles.

"We have achieved much since 1945, when the United Nations was established," the outgoing secretary-general said. "But much remains to be done to put those five principles into practice."

Annan's remarks, he insisted, were not meant to be "attacks" on the White House. "Our challenge today is not to save Western civilization -- or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task.

"You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart," he added. "Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago? Surely not. More than ever today Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world's peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition.

"I hope and pray that the American leaders of today, and tomorrow, will provide it," he added, in an obvious plea to the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.

At the ensuing question and answer session Annan was asked about the address being an attack on the United States.

In his low-key style, Annan replied he was merely relaying a "vision" and that required a look back in history.

"When the United States works with multilateral partners we do extremely well," the secretary-general said. "We require the natural leadership role the United States played in the past and can play today. So, an appeal for leadership should never be seen as an attack."

But that in itself was critical of recent past leadership.

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