Ohmygosh, they've called in Jim Baker to fix "the vexing political and military situation in Iraq"! Please, can we just throw in the towel now?

The moment I saw this head in one of this morning's Washington Post online newsletters--

Called From Diplomatic Reserve
Former Secretary of State Leads Attempt to Salvage Iraq Mission

--of course I knew who the mysteriously unnamed "former secretary of state" had to be, and I wasn't guessing Madeline Albright or even Colin Powell. Sure enough, that's Bushworld's Mr. Fix-It, James A. Baker III, in the photo at right with Iraqi President Jalai Talabani. (Less charitable sources might refer to our Jim as Mr. Fixer, or perhaps Bushworld Bagman Extraordinaire.)

For the dreary record, here's how the story--by Post political writer Michael Abramowitz, in full butt-licking mode--starts:

Is Jim Baker bailing out the Bushes once again?

The former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, a confidant of President George H.W. Bush, visited Baghdad two weeks ago to take a look at the vexing political and military situation. He was there as co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, put together by top think tanks at the behest of Congress to come up with ideas about the way forward in Iraq.

The group has attracted little attention beyond foreign policy elites since its formation this year. But it is widely viewed within that small world as perhaps the last hope for a midcourse correction in a venture they generally agree has been a disaster.

The reason, by and large, is the involvement of Baker, 76, the legendary troubleshooter who remains close to the first President Bush and cordial with the second. Many policy experts think that if anyone can forge bipartisan consensus on a plan for extricating the United States from Iraq -- and then successfully pitch that plan to a president who has so far seemed impervious to outside pressure -- it is the man who put together the first Gulf War coalition, which evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. . . .

In fairness to Jim Baker (a phrase I never expected to find myself writing), his primary allegiance may still be to the elder George Bush, whose view of our Iraq adventure, like that of most of his foreign-policy circle, is known to be very different from Junior's.

All the same, for President Talabani's sake, I sure hope he kept one hand on his wallet at all times while our Jim--er, make that "our legendary Jim"--was in Baghdad.