The Iraq Study Group has arrived at some conclusions.
The "elite" assembly of some of the finest minds in the country has agreed on a plan of action for U.S. involvement in Iraq.
The results were to be revealed NEXT Wednesday.
Of course, the group's findings were leaked already.
From (where else?) the leakers' paradise, The New York Times:
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.
The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.
NONBINDING.
Yes and no.
Actually, I think the recommendations are binding, at least in the sense that they place a great deal of pressure on the President to accept them.
In effect, this little Study Group has taken on the role of a shadow administration.
I don't think there's anything wrong with input and suggestions; but that's not how all of this has been framed.
The presentation to the American public, via the lib media, is that the Iraq Study Group has the authority to come up with a solution to the Iraq problem (or civil war, if you work for NBC or are Colin Powell).
The leaking of its conclusions are hardly being reported as some simple suggestions from merely an advisory panel.
A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”
"A person who participated in the commission's debate."
Don't you just love those leakers? What would The Times without them?
The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.
The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.
In effect, the report takes power out of the President's hands and pressures him to do what the Study Group says.
As the commission wound up two and a half days of deliberation in Washington, the group said in a public statement only that a consensus had been reached and that the report would be delivered next Wednesday to President Bush, Congress and the American public. Members of the commission were warned by Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton not to discuss the contents of the report.
But four people involved in the debate, representing different points of view, agreed to outline its conclusions in broad terms to address what they said might otherwise be misperceptions about the findings. Some said their major concern was that the report might be too late.
What upstanding people these group members are!
They reach consensus yesterday and before the night is out, they're leaking.
Members were warned not to discuss the report.
Well, four people dismissed that entirely, supposedly due to their concerns that a week might make the report irrelevant.
What a lame excuse! Truly lame!!!
Although the diplomatic strategy takes up the majority of the report, it was the military recommendations that prompted the most debate, people familiar with the deliberations said. They said a draft report put together under the direction of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton had collided with another, circulated by other Democrats on the commission, that included an explicit timeline calling for withdrawal of the combat brigades to be completed by the end of next year. In the end, the two proposals were blended.
If Mr. Bush adopts the recommendations, far more American training teams will be embedded with Iraqi forces, a last-ditch effort to make the Iraqi Army more capable of fighting alone. That is a step already embraced in a memorandum that Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, wrote to the president this month.
“I think everyone felt good about where we ended up,” one person involved in the commission’s debates said after the group ended its meeting. “It is neither ‘cut and run’ nor ‘stay the course.’ ”
“Those who favor immediate withdrawal will not like it,” he said, but it also “deviates significantly from the president’s strategy.”
The report also would offer military commanders — and therefore the president — great flexibility to determine the timing and phasing of the pullback of the combat brigades.
Translation: Bush should agree to implement the recommendations. Anything short of compliance will be viewed as pigheaded on the part of President Bush and the administration.
Reuters also reports on the Iraq Study Group's leaked recommendations.
The anonymous source that talked to Reuters gave a little different take on things than what The Times splashed.
"The main thing is (the group is) calling for a transition from a combat role to a support role," said the source, who spoke on condition that he not be named. "It's basically a redeployment."
It says, "HE not be named." That means Sandra Day O'Connor was not the leaker.
The source said the idea was to shift U.S. combat forces both to bases inside Iraq as well as elsewhere in the region as the military gradually moved away from combat operations, adding that this should happen over the next year or so.
The New York Times earlier reported that there was no timetable for the proposed U.S. pullback, but the source said: "there is a kind of indication in the report as to when that ought to be completed ... sometime within the next year."
The independent, bipartisan group also decided to call for a regional conference that could lead to direct U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, both accused by the United States of fomenting violence in Iraq, the source added.
The Iraq Study Group is not only acting as Commander-in-Chief, but it's assuming the role of Secretary of State as well.
Who needs a State Department or a Department of Defense when you've got a Study Group?
Many in Washington have held out hope that the group's report would provide a way for the United States to extricate itself from an increasingly deadly and unpopular war or, at least, a set of recommendations on how to move forward that could attract support from both Democrats and Republicans.
Their conclusions are likely to carry significant political weight even if President Bush chooses to ignore them, especially after his fellow Republicans lost control of the U.S. Congress in November 7 elections largely because of deep public discontent with the Iraq war.
This is the problem.
Their conclusions are more than advisory. They have much greater significance.
I'm not comfortable with the politics.
I wonder what would have happened in 1945 if Harry Truman has been bound by a Study Group's recommendations to decide the course of the war in the Pacific.
_________________________________
Today, President Bush met with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, after talks scheduled for Wednesday were abruptly cancelled.
He didn't seemed fazed by the Study Groups' recommendations.
AMMAN, Jordan -- President Bush pledged Thursday that U.S. troops will remain in Iraq to strengthen the authority of embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and said the two agreed to speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces.
...The president acknowledged the pressure at home for the beginning of U.S. troop withdrawals but he said, "We'll be in Iraq until the job is complete, at the request of a sovereign government elected by the people."
He said the United States — which now has about 140,000 troops in Iraq _will stay "to get the job done so long as the government wants us there."
Bush said he wanted to begin troop withdrawals "as soon as possible. But I'm a realist because I understand how tough it is inside of Iraq."
Iraq Study Group? What Iraq Study Group?
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