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Panel: Bush's Iraq Policies Have Failed
Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., the other chairman, said the commission agreed with Bush's goal of an Iraq able to govern, protect and sustain itself, but that the administration needed new approaches.
"No course of action in Iraq is guaranteed to stop a slide toward chaos," Hamilton said. "Yet, in our view, not all options have been exhausted."
  In this image provided by Vintage Books, the cover of The Iraq Study Group Report, which will be published on Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006, by Vintage Books, is shown. (AP Photo/Vintage Books, John Gall) (John Gall - AP) 
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The report has been widely seen as an opportunity for Bush to pivot from policies blamed in large part for Republican losses in elections last month. Bush praised the group's work, but gave no hint of his next move. He said he would give the findings a hard look and urged Congress to do the same.
"This report gives a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq," Bush said after an early morning briefing from the group of former government officials and advisers. "It is a report that brings some really very interesting proposals, and we will take every proposal seriously and we will act in a timely fashion."
Bush met later with members of Congress from both parties and said he wanted to cooperate to "send a message to the American people that the struggle for freedom, the struggle for our security is not the purview of one party over the other."
The commission also briefed members of the Iraqi government by teleconference, and one official there agreed that Iraqis must take responsibility for their own security. "Absolute dependence on foreign troops is not possible," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.
The Bush administration has tried to keep the commission at arm's length so as not to appear hostage to its recommendations. To make the point that Bush will make his own choices, the White House stresses that other administration reviews are under way and Bush will have a menu of options to consider.
Baker offered a word of caution on that point during an interview with Associated Press Television News on Wednesday.
"This is the only bipartisan report for sale," and thus the one most likely to gain crucial consensus, Baker said.
Among its 79 recommendations, the group said the United States should reduce political, military or economic support for Iraq if the government in Baghdad cannot make substantial progress. The report said Iraqi leaders have failed to deliver better security or political compromises that would reduce violence, and it implied that a four-month joint U.S.-Iraqi military campaign to reduce violence in Baghdad is hopeless.
"Because none of the operations conducted by U.S. and Iraqi military forces are fundamentally changing the conditions encouraging the sectarian violence, U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end," the report said.
That was a withering evaluation of a central tenet of the Bush military strategy in Iraq. In Baghdad and elsewhere, U.S. forces are supposed to help Iraqi units "clear, hold and build," shorthand for routing insurgents or other fighters from problem areas, securing those areas from further violence and setting a positive future course.
On the highly emotional issue of troop withdrawals, the commission warned against either a precipitous pullback or an open-ended commitment to a large deployment.
"Military priorities must change," the report said, toward a goal of training, equipping and advising Iraqi forces.
The report said Bush should put aside misgivings and engage Syria, Iran and the leaders of insurgent forces in negotiations on Iraq's future, to begin by year's end. It urged him to revive efforts at a broader Middle East peace.
The report laid out consequences from bad to worse, including the threat of wider war in the Middle East and reduced oil production that would hurt the global economy.
In a slap at the Pentagon, the commission said there is significant underreporting of the actual level of violence in Iraq. It also faulted the U.S. intelligence effort, saying the government "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias."
The commission recommended the number of U.S. troops embedded to train Iraqis should increase dramatically, from 3,000 to 4,000 currently to 10,000 to 20,000. Commission member William Perry, defense secretary in the Clinton administration, said those could be drawn from combat brigades already in Iraq.
The report noted that Iraq costs run about $8 billion a month and that the bills will keep coming. "Caring for veterans and replacing lost equipment will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars," the commission said. "Estimates run as high as $2 trillion for the final cost of the U.S. involvement in Iraq."
On the Net:
The Iraq Study Group report is available at:
http:/
APTN interview with commission co-chairs: Video: http:/
