WASHINGTON, 1 December 2006 — A bipartisan commission will unveil long-awaited recommendations for a new US policy in Iraq next week that a published report said would call for a gradual pullback of US troops there — without a timetable — and direct diplomacy with Iran and Syria.
Such recommendations would require a shift in policy for the Bush Administration that President Bush has shown no hint of implementing.
“This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all,” he said yesterday at a news conference in Jordan.
Without any specific reference to the commission, Bush acknowledged a general pressure for US troop withdrawals but said, “We’ll be in Iraq until the job is complete, at the request of a sovereign government elected by the people.”
Although the diplomatic strategy takes up the majority of the report, it was the military recommendations that prompted the most debate.
The New York Times reported yesterday that the study group will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American brigades now in Iraq, but will stop short of setting a specific timetable for their withdrawal. [A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.]
The Times, citing unidentified people familiar with the report, said it does not state whether the brigades should be pulled back to isolated bases in Iraq or to neighboring countries.
“I think everyone felt good about where we ended up,” one source told the newspaper, describing the final report. “It is neither ‘cut and run’ nor ‘stay the course.’”
The Iraq Study Group has also decided to recommend that the US military transition from a combat role to a support role in Iraq — a source familiar with the panel’s deliberations said on Wednesday — and it will suggest restructuring the US forces in Iraq, gradually replacing combat troops with soldiers who would help train Iraqi forces.
If Bush adopts the recommendations, far more American training teams, called MiTTs -or Military Transition Teams — will be embedded with Iraqi forces, as a final effort to make the Iraqi Army more capable of fighting alone. That step has already been implemented in Iraq by US troops with large a degree of success.
Recommendations from a united Iraq Study Group will be much harder for Bush to resist than if the group were divided, experts and study group advisers say. Bush is under growing political pressure to change policy in Iraq.
The independent, bipartisan group also decided to call for a regional conference that could lead to direct US talks with Iran and Syria, both accused by the United States of fomenting violence in Iraq.
The final report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, to be issued next Wednesday, will be what those close to the group described as a centrist document that offers a blunt critique of Iraq’s worsening situation while calling for a continued — though not indefinite — American commitment.
Democratic and Republican panel members have complained privately of political pressure. But the five Democrats and five Republicans, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a close friend of the Bush family, and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), reached agreement in final rounds of meetings and focused on a recommendation that the US devise a far more aggressive diplomatic imitative in the Middle East.
The Iraq Study Group will also set a timetable for Iraq’s takeover of security.
Hamilton made a strong case for America talking with its adversaries. “I don’t see how you solve problems” without talking, he said.
Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman and Democrat who also co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, said he did not think dialogue would quickly solve tensions with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, “terrorism” and other concerns. But he stressed, “We must be sensitive to the agendas of other nations.”
To date, President Bush has rejected any diplomatic contact with Iran and Syria.
Some critics are warning not to expect much from the report: “After nine months of studying, the commission will finally give some recommendations next week. Its deliberations are so relaxed that it co-chairmen... found time on Monday to pose for an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Men’s Vogue.
“With good ideas in short supply, and hopes falling that the Men’s Vogue Study Group will produce a magic solution, leaders of both parties seem unable to do much more than heap blame on Maliki and argue about whether or not to call the Iraq carnage a civil war,” wrote Dana Milbank in yesterday’s Washington Post.
