Josh Marshall also links to this article:
Iraq debt write-off plea waits for PM The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) 12/08/03
<< Baker, 73, insisted when he was appointed presidential envoy that he will report solely to the President. He was secretary of state during the 1991 Gulf war and is expected to deal with more than just Iraq’s debt, though publicly that is his brief for the moment. If Baker meddles in other aspects of the Iraqi occupation — as he is widely expected to do — he will substantially undercut Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, the secretaries of state and defence.
<< By agreeing to negotiate the debt, he has already entered the turf of treasury secretary John Snow. >>
I remember in one of Baker's fixer missions, rescuing Old Man Bush's doomed 1992 re-election campaign, political pundits speculated that when he was brought in a campaign manager, he would stop all the sleaze-slinging and pull everything together.
Instead, the sleaze-slinging got worse and the campaign continued its way to defeat.
But Baker is part of Old Man Bush's team more than Junior's. And Bush Senior was never fond of Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. There could be some interesting fireworks with Baker in that position.
But keeping our eyes on the ball here means looking at what Baker will be doing in the Iraq War to improve Junior's re-election prospects: not what he'll be doing to salvage the optimal military and political solution to Bush and Rummy's war. The former is his mission, not the latter.
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