Bush Looks for an Exit

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Of course some people don't like being rescued, and there is little reason to think that Bush or anyone around him is going to enjoy the visit by the Baker-Hamilton emergency squad. While there will be no lights flashing or sirens wailing, the commission is proposing nothing short of a repudiation of pretty much all U.S. foreign policy for the past three years. The Iraq Study Group will call for a massive diplomatic push in two areas in which the White House has never put its shoulder to the grindstone: rekindling peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis and holding an international conference that would lead to direct talks between Washington and both Tehran and Damascus. The commission agreed that the political turmoil inside Iraq could only be sorted out with the cooperation of neighboring countries, particularly Syria, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the strongest ties to the Shi'ite and Sunni groups propelling Iraq ever deeper into civil war.

The study group's military proposals are performance based: they would link a staged withdrawal from Iraq by U.S. forces to stronger actions by the struggling Iraqi government. The report does not set a timetable for troop reductions, but it is expected to offer Baghdad a slower withdrawal if the government takes steps to end the violence. If Baghdad cannot make that happen, the troops would depart at an even faster rate. The genius of the approach is that if security returns as a consequence of this squeeze play, the need for U.S. troops will presumably also decrease. Says an expert who briefed the panel on the idea of trading troops for cooperation: "Unless we use our withdrawal as leverage against reduced violence, anything we do will be drained away in the sands of an ineffective central government." That is why, either way, the report envisions, but stops short of stating flatly, that troop withdrawals should begin sometime next year.