The NRO Corner‘s John Podhoretz in this NY Daily News op-ed makes clear that he is not buying into that whole “elder statesman” thing that the NY Times reported last week regarding James Baker, III’s co-chairmanship of the Iraq Study Group:

As Dana Milbank reports in The Washington Post, on Monday the [Iraq Study Group’s] “co-chairmen, James Baker and Lee Hamilton, found time . . . to pose for an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Men’s Vogue.”[. . .]
Baker, Hamilton and their crew of old Washington hands (and I mean old, like Metheuselah-level old) are recommending a “gradual pullback” of American troops but without a timetable. That basically translates into a nice, long, slow defeat – the “graceful exit” of which the president spoke so harshly.[. . .]
This is the consensus view of the Iraq Study Group, which is very proud that it reached consensus.

Its members also reached a consensus view that Depends is a really fine brand of adult diaper, and that they love reruns of “Murder, She Wrote.”
You perhaps note that I am writing with extreme disrespect toward the Iraq Study Group. That’s because its report is a scandal and an embarrassment; it’s flatly immoral to seek to make or guide policy in this fashion.
Look, if its members believe the war is lost, they should say so. They should bite the bullet and advocate a pullout of American forces sooner rather than later.
If its members could not actually achieve consensus on that point – if, in other words, some of its members still believe the war can be won while others believe there’s no way to achieve victory – then it was simple vanity on the part of the Gang of 10 that led to the creation of a “consensus” document that split the difference.
There’s no way to split the difference, unless you’re hurrying off to have your mug immortalized by Annie Leibovitz and want to bang down the gavel so you can get plenty of time to get hair and makeup done.
America and its allies are either going to win this war or we’re going to lose. We will either conclude our military actions in Iraq with terrorists and insurgents dead or fled and an imposition of civil order in the country by its elected government, or we will turn tail and leave the place in chaos and ruins.
What’s even more appalling, if true, is the group’s other key recommendation – which is that America should try to find answers to its problems through an international conference that would include Syria and Iran.
What do Syria and Iran want more than anything else in the world? To see an American defeat in Iraq. To see an America so crippled that they can work their will in the Middle East without fear of retribution. Syria could swallow up Lebanon whole once again. Iran could do whatever it chooses inside and outside its borders (develop and peddle nuclear weaponry, sponsor terrorism against Israeli and Western targets) with impunity.
They’re going to be a great help. But then, that’s Baker for you. Give him a problem and he’ll tell you your best hope of solving it can be found in sucking up to an Arab dictator.

Read the entire op-ed. The Chronicle’s Anne Belli chimes in with a more respectful profile of Baker here.