Original source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/world/middleeast/07baker.html?th&emc=th December 7, 2006 Panel Urges Basic Shift in U.S. Policy in Iraq By DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 ‹ A bipartisan commission warned Wednesday that ³the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating,² and it handed President Bush both a rebuke for his current strategy and a detailed blueprint for a fundamentally different approach, including the pullback of all American combat brigades over the next 15 months. In unusually sweeping and blunt language, the panel of five Republicans and five Democrats issued 79 specific recommendations. These included a call for direct engagement with Syria and Iran as part of a ³new diplomatic offensive,² jump-starting the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort, and a clear declaration that the United States would reduce its support to Iraq unless Baghdad made ³substantial progress² on reconciliation and security. Mr. Bush has refused to deal with Syria and Iran, and as recently as last week, he assured Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that the American commitment to Iraq would be undiminished until victory was achieved. But the commission, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, argued that while Americans might be in Iraq for years, the Iraqis must understand that the American military commitment was not ³open ended.² It is time, the panel said, for the United States to ³begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.² The detailed prescription called for much more aggressive diplomatic efforts in the Middle East than the Bush administration has been willing to embrace. Its calls for reconciliation and reform in Iraq and an overhaul of the American military role would also mark major departures in the American strategy. Members of the commission said they believed that their recommendations would improve prospects for success in Iraq, but they said there was no guarantee against failure. ³The current approach is not working, and the ability of the United States to influence events is diminishing,² Mr. Hamilton said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. ³Our ship of state has hit rough waters. It must now chart a new way forward.² Administration officials said they expected President Bush to announce his own ³way forward² this month. They were careful not to take issue with the report¹s findings in public, and said Mr. Bush had yet to make firm decisions. But some suggested that the diplomatic strategy in the report better fit the Middle East of 15 years ago, when Mr. Baker served as secretary of state. What played out on Wednesday morning, from the White House to Capitol Hill, was a remarkable condemnation of American policy drift in the biggest and most divisive military conflict to involve American forces since Vietnam. It was all the more unusual because Mr. Baker was secretary of state to Mr. Bush¹s father, and because the bipartisan group managed to come up with unanimous recommendations. The report was delivered in an atmosphere of mounting anxiety about the war, a month after midterm elections that brought the Democrats to power in Congress and prompted Mr. Bush to oust Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary. On Wednesday the Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm Robert M. Gates as the next defense secretary, after hearings in which he acknowledged that the United States was not winning the war and that the region could be on the brink of much broader conflict. Mr. Baker, Mr. Hamilton and their eight colleagues presented their recommendations to Mr. Bush and to leaders of Congress beginning early on Wednesday, and then spoke to Mr. Maliki via conference call. Mr. Bush called the assessment ³tough² and said each recommendation would be taken ³seriously.² Mr. Bush, one commission member said, ³was very gracious and did not push back.² Commission members said they believed that their report, which was downloaded more than 400,000 times from the computer servers of the United States Institute of Peace in the first five hours after its release, had fundamentally changed the debate. Now, said one member, the former Justice Sandra Day O¹Connor, ³it really is out of our hands.² Leon E. Panetta, a commission member who served as chief of staff to President Clinton, said, ³The country cannot be at war and as divided as we are today.² The panel was careful to avoid phrases and rigid timelines that might alienate the White House. But the group also clearly tried to box the president in, presenting its recommendations as a comprehensive strategy that would work only if implemented in full. That appeared to be a warning to Mr. Bush, who in recent days has said he would consider the independent panel¹s findings alongside studies by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council, and has suggested that he would pick the best elements of each. The commission did not embrace the goal of ³victory in Iraq,² which President Bush laid out as his own strategy a year ago, nor did its report echo the White House¹s early aspiration that Iraq might be transformed into a democracy in the near future. ³We want to stay current,² Mr. Hamilton said briskly. As the stated goal in Iraq, the panel chose instead the formulation that Mr. Bush has adopted most recently: to establish a country that can sustain itself, govern itself and defend itself. ³That was the latest elaboration of the goal,² Mr. Baker said, ³and that¹s the one we¹re working with.² The findings left Washington awash in speculation over whether Mr. Bush would embark on a huge policy reversal. To do so would mark an admission that three and a half years of strategy had failed, and that his repeated assurances that ³absolutely, we¹re winning² were based more on optimism than realism. The committee rejected a stricter timeline for withdrawal advocated by one member, William J. Perry, a defense secretary under President Clinton, though Mr. Perry persuaded the commission to set clear goals for the withdrawal of troops. Jack D. Crouch II, the president¹s deputy national security adviser, was said by administration officials to be putting together options for Mr. Bush, and they said the president was determined to come up with an approach that, one senior aide said, ³borrowed from the panel¹s findings, but is distinctly his own.² Democrats largely embraced the findings. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said the group had done ³a tremendous and historic service² by declaring ³there must be a change in Iraq, and there is no time to lose.² But other Democrats were clearly disappointed that the commission did not embrace calls for a rapid withdrawal, as Representative John P. Murtha recommended a year ago, or a partition of the country, as Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat soon to lead the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said is necessary. Mr. Bush can easily accept some of the findings, including a call for a fivefold increase in American trainers working alongside Iraqi forces. The commission¹s report included blistering critiques of current policy. It said, for example, that intelligence agencies had far too few people with an understanding of the roots of the insurgency in Iraq. ³We were told there are fewer than 10 analysts on the job at the Defense Intelligence Agency who have more than two years¹ experience in analyzing the insurgency,² the report said. The speed and phasing of the military pullback was the most contentious issue with the commission, and the result is unlikely to satisfy critics on either side. The panel, for example, adopted the core of a proposal made by Mr. Perry to vastly increase training of Iraqi forces while simultaneously pulling back combat brigades, a ³train and retreat² scenario that some in the military say is already under way. Another Democratic member, former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, argued for a surge of additional troops to stabilize Baghdad, an idea the commission was not willing to embrace fully. Instead, it left open the possibility of supporting a ³short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps would be effective.² But the key proposal, No. 21, is that the United States should tell the Iraqis that failure to meet their own milestones will only accelerate American withdrawal, or result in a reduction of American support. ³If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security and governance, the United States should reduce its political, military or economic support for the Iraqi government,² the report says. Advocates of that approach said it was a long-overdue effort to shift responsibility onto the Iraqis. ³If Iraq continues to fail, or failed worse, it means you have put the lion¹s share of the blame on the Iraqis,² said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a critic of the decision to invade Iraq when he served in the State Department. Critics of the panel¹s conclusion called the approach naïve. ³The study group is threatening to weaken a weak government,² said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of the groups that helped sponsor the study group, which was established by Congress. And, he added: ³There is no ŒPlan B.¹ The report does not address what happens if events spiral out of control.² The most controversial element of the diplomatic strategy is the panel¹s case for engaging Iran, though Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton, the chairmen, acknowledged in an interview that they thought it unlikely the Iranians would cooperate. Mr. Baker insisted that even if that effort failed, ³the world would see their rejectionist attitude.² Kate Zernike contributed reporting. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Blogs: cyberjournal forum http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/ Achieving real democracy http://harmonization.blogspot.com/ for readers of ETM http://matrixreaders.blogspot.com/ Community Empowerment http://empowermentinitiatives.blogspot.com/ Blogger made easy http://quaylargo.com/help/ezblogger.html
