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Baker: No 'magic bullet' for Iraq
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker has warned not to expect a special Iraq panel he co-chairs to come up with a "magic bullet" to solve deepening problems in that country. He said the bipartisan Iraq Study Group appointed by the U.S. Congress to look at alternatives to current policy in Iraq had not decided what to recommend, but he suggested there was no easy way out of the violent conflict.

"I will say one other thing -- there's no magic bullet for the situation in Iraq. It is very, very difficult," Baker said on Tuesday in a speech to the World Affairs Council of Houston. "So anybody who thinks that somehow we're going to come up with something that is going to totally solve the problem is engaging in wishful thinking," he said.
I'm afraid the time for the "magic bullet" has passed. An intel-driven killing campaign against the terrorist infrastructure would do it, but some of the main targets are part of the Iraqi government, to which we're deferring for the moment. To begin implementing the (literal) magic bullets, we'd have to ignore half the government and assassinate the other half. But that would deal with the problem sufficiently to have it cleared up in a year.

Posted by: Fred 2006-10-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=169233