The latest neocon to weigh in with preemptive rhetoric about the Iraq Study Group is Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy, in today's Washington Times. Gaffney calls the ISG "the Iraq Surrender Group," a name for which he thanks John Wohlstetter, offsping of Albert Wohlstetter, the founder of neocon national security policy. Gaffney calls the ISG "unelected, unaccountable, and substantially unqualified." Its job, he says, is to "secure the political fig leaf needed to obscure our surrender in Iraq." (I'd say Gaffney has just about got it right.)

The growing chorus of neocon attacks on the Iraq Study Group was bolstered by the Wall Street Journal this morning, in an editorial called "The Iraq Muddle Group." It is important because it poses in clear terms the neocon counterview on Iraq, namely, that the United States has to support the sectarian Shiite government of Iraq in a renewed war against Sunni insurgents.

The Journal calls for "strong support for Baghdad's Shiite-led government coalition" against "the main enemy ... the Sunni terrorists. They can't be appeased." It backs those in the Bush administration, including (reportedly) Philip Zelikow, the just-resigned State Department counselor, who support the "80 percent solution," that is, all-out U.S. support for the Shiite-Kurdish alliance against the Sunnis.

It should be noted that this is contradicted by the main thrust of the Baker-Hamilton group, which argues for renewed efforts at national reconciliation in Iraq, tied to diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors, and which calls for open dialogue between the United States and its opponents in Iraq. The United States, said the ISG, "must also try to talk directly to Muqtada al-Sadr, to militia leaders, and to insurgent leaders."

Now, the fact that the ISG wants to triple or quadruple U.S. training of the Iraqi armed forces is a dumb idea, since those armed forces are almsot entirely made up of Kurdish pesh merga and Shiite militiamen. My own belief is, that long before we can train and equip Iraq's rag-tag army, we'll be on our way out of Iraq. No serious analyst things that the United States can train Iraqi forces by 2008. (Anthony Cordesman of CSIS: "There is no meaningful plan for creating a mix of effective Iraqi military forces, police forces, governance, and criminal justice system at any point in the near future, much less by 2008.") Really, and truly, it is game over in Iraq.

Those of you interested in parsing my encounter with David Horowitz, Sean Hannity, and Alan Colmes on Tuesday night can read the whole text here. In it, against all odds, I struggle to make the point that those who say that America's overweening support for Israel inflames Arab and Muslim opinion are not exactly making a radical statement. To wit:

DREYFUSS: The fact is he made the most rational point you could make, which is that America's support for Israel is, indeed, a motivating force for Muslim political anger at the United States and its Middle East policies.

HANNITY: That's outrageous.

DREYFUSS: That's not a controversial statement.