I’ve been a member of the “expert” advisory group of the Baker/Hamilton panel. The frustration I and a few others faced: We thought our task was to develop options to move forward in Iraq. Most of our colleagues thought the task was to develop options to move out of Iraq.

In other words, the few hawks (or conservatives or neo-cons or whatever you want to call them) were arguing not for “victory” as Bush once envisioned it (Iraq as a shining city on the Middle Eastern hill) but against accepting defeat at the hands of such groups al Qaeda in Iraq and Saddam loyalists, against lamely attempting to disguise defeat as “redeployment” or “an exit strategy.” At the very least, we implored, let’s imagine and plan for the likely consequences of American defeat. That was derided as subscribing to the “domino theory.”

The Foreign Policy Establishment types who dominate the Iraq Study Group had opposed the war from the start and, in my view, mostly wanted to send Bush this message: “Idiot! We told you so!”

They were unconvinced by the case that I and a few others were making: That if the U.S. mission in Iraq sinks, it won’t just be Captain Bush and his neo-con crew that will drown. America will have a lost a key battle in a serious global conflict.

I think the following quote from one unnamed commission member who was a source for the NYT story today, confirms what I’ve said above: “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”