while I'm looking forward to your analysis, what struck me was the "unreality" of the whole report. Perhaps the single most critical act that should have been recommended is completely ignored -- an admission that the United States should never have invaded Iraq in the first place, and the current situation in Iraq is due solely to the incompetence and venality of the Bush administration.

The report is supposedly about "moving forward".... but absent an acknowledgement that this has been a clusterfuck from the getgo, "forward" remains undefined --- its not sufficient to simply talk about "current conditions", without an accounting of the mistakes that were made, and continue to be made, there is simply no assurance that "forward" is anything more than "stay the course"

Posted by: p.lukasiak at December 7, 2006 05:42 AM | Permalink to this comment

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Posted by: me at December 7, 2006 05:19 PM | Permalink to this comment