Dec 6th, 2006, 01:48 PM
Iraq Panel
So? Opinions? Will W talk with Iran and/or Syria? Will he link Iraq with Palestinian issues? Will there be any sort of motion toward a troop draw down? Will he red any of the report himself?
And what of the "Least bad" approach? W has repratedly said that Victory is his exit strategy. This report pretty much says that the possability of 'victory' in any of the ways W has defined it is past.
Iraq Panel Warns of Looming "Catastrophe" in Iraq
By Peter Baker, Dafna Linzer and William Branigin
The Washington Post
Wednesday 06 December 2006
Circumstances in Iraq are "grave and deteriorating," with a potential government collapse and a "humanitarian catastrophe" if the U.S. does not change course and seek a broader diplomatic solution to the problems that have wracked the country since the U.S. invaded, according to a bipartisan panel that sent its findings to President Bush and Congress today.
In what amounts to the most extensive independent assessment of the nearly four-year-old conflict that has claimed the lives of 2,800 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the Iraq Study Group painted a bleak picture of a nation that risks a "slide toward chaos" without new efforts to reconcile its feuding religious and ethnic minorities.
Despite a laundry list of recommendations meant to encourage regional diplomacy and lead to a draw down of U.S. forces over the next year, the panel acknowledged that stability in the country may be impossible to achieve any time soon.
"No one can guarantee that any course of action in Iraq at this point will stop sectarian warfare, growing violence or a slide toward chaos," the panel's two chairmen, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, wrote in a joint letter accompanying the 142 page report. "There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq."
The 79 recommendations include the withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008, but with a large force left behind to train and assist Iraqi security and military personnel. It also proposes setting benchmarks for Iraq to assume control of its own security, and threaten to reduce military or financial aid if deadlines are missed. A broad diplomatic initiative, including overtures to Iran and Syria and renewed efforts to broke an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, is also recommended.
"If current trends continue, the potential consequences are severe," with sectarian clashes spreading, Al Qaeda claiming at least a propaganda victory, and U.S. stature in the world diminished, the report found. Given the stakes, and the responsibility the U.S. holds for invading in the spring of 2003, "the United States has special obligations," and needed to "address as best it can Iraq's many problems."
President Bush received a copy of the long-awaited report this morning and vowed that his administration would take its recommendations "very seriously" and act on them "in a timely fashion."
Flanked by the co-chairmen of the study group, Bush told reporters in the White House that the report contains "some really interesting proposals" and gives "a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq."
Bush also urged members of Congress to take the report seriously, but he said that neither Congress nor his administration were likely to agree with every proposal by the study group.
Bush did not provide any details of the recommendations, but some of them have been outlined by knowledgeable sources in recent days.
Some proposals in the report track measures that the administration is already carrying out or is considering, but several directly challenge Bush in areas in which he has refused to compromise. The president has rejected talking with Iran and Syria and has resisted linking the Iraq war to the Palestinian issue. He has dismissed timetables for troop withdrawals, although the panel cites 2008 as a goal rather than a firm deadline. He has also declined to punish Iraqis for not making progress in establishing security.
Although the study group will present its plan as a much-needed course change in Iraq, many of its own advisers concluded during its deliberations that the war is essentially already lost, according to private correspondence obtained yesterday and interviews with participants. The best the commission could put forward would be the "least bad" of many bad options, as former ambassador Daniel C. Kurtzer wrote.
An early working draft from July stated that "there is even doubt that any level of resources could achieve the administration's stated goals, given the illiberal and undemocratic political forces, many of them Islamic fundamentalists, that will dominate large parts of the country for a long time."
In private e-mail exchanges over the past two weeks, members of the commission's working group, including former ambassadors, military officers and CIA analysts, expressed equally bleak outlooks for Iraq and skepticism that Bush would accept the panel's recommendations.
The report that resulted from that process is a mix of initiatives and conclusions that cover an array of areas, including a long diplomatic section, a security section and the proposed benchmarks for Iraqi leaders. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, who served under President George H.W. Bush and co-chaired the commission, briefed the current president on its conclusions over lunch yesterday.
Baker and his co-chairman, former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), and the rest of the 10-member panel met with Bush at the White House at 7 a.m. today to formally hand over the report before heading to Capitol Hill for an 11 a.m. news conference. The report will be released at that time on four Web sites and is being published today as a mass-market paperback by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, under the title "The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - a New Approach."
Some of its conclusions, such as the need for a phased withdrawal and for shifting the mission of U.S. forces, have been reported over the past few days. Much of the report, though, emphasizes diplomatic options. Advisers said they pushed for dialogue with Iraq's immediate neighbors, Iran and Syria, as a major path toward improving the situation, despite a belief that Bush would reject the recommendation outright because of those countries' ties to terrorism.
Baker, who as secretary of state spent much time working to bring peace to the Middle East after the Persian Gulf War, made a personal point of including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the report and "laying out the importance of why it needs to be dealt with and a strategy to deal with it," said a source familiar with the report. Baker has been close to the Saudi royal family and his ideas may provoke opposition from Israel and its allies.
The benchmarks laid out for Iraqi forces are similar to the goals the Iraqi government recently embraced, the source said. Unlike Bush, though, the commission recommends consequences for not meeting them. "If they don't do it, we ought to reduce the military, economic and political support," the source said.
At the same time, the source said, the U.S. military strategy ought to be implemented regardless of whether Iraqis meet their benchmarks. But the commission warns against turning over control of security to Iraqi forces until reforms are in place.
Clifford May, one of the working group's advisers and a former Republican Party spokesman, was one of two advisers who opposed withdrawal and supported Bush's strategy, but he said he "'as willing to concede from the start that what Bush hoped for is probably not achievable. But it doesn't mean that nothing is achievable."
May said the report includes "at least 70 recommendations," but a timetable for troop withdrawal is not among them. "Instead, it says we have a mission that can be accomplished, and it defines that mission as the need to leave behind a government that can sustain itself," May said.
Much debate in e-mail exchanges among the most outspoken advisers to the study group focused on whether adding troops would help. But most feared that bringing in the large numbers required would break the military, lead to a surge in U.S. deaths and do nothing to better protect civilians.
In the end, the experts did not agree on sending additional forces beyond military advisers for the Iraqi national army. They seemed certain that Bush would reject most of their recommendations and that few could work anyway.
"Very early on, the notion of achieving some sort of victory didn't take," said Chas W. Freeman Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "So if victory is not possible and not feasible, even if you could define it, then what you're left with is to find some way to mitigate defeat."
James Dobbins, a principal U.S. architect of the Afghan reconciliation process, said he supported "an intensified regional dialogue that would be comprehensive and encompass all of Iraq's neighbors." But he and others on the staff said a push for more U.S. engagement with Israel and the Palestinians was rarely discussed beyond a few e-mail exchanges.
"It was kind of assumed by everybody that if the U.S. devoted more attention to it, it would be a good thing in its own right, but we didn't devote much time to that, so if it becomes a recommendation, it would likely come directly from Baker and Hamilton," said Kurtzer, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt.
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