Bush Looks for an Exit

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To bring Bush aboard, Solomon, Hamre and Abshire approached the one person in Bushland who still had a reputation for realism and who could command the President's ear, alone: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Would she propose the commission to the President? After some hesitation, Rice agreed, but she made one request: the commission had to look forward, not backward, in part because she knew the dysfunctional Bush foreign policy operation, tilted as it was so heavily along the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis, would not permit, much less sustain, scrutiny. As the trio departed, a Rice aide asked one of her suitors not to inform anyone at the Pentagon that chairmen had been chosen and the study group was moving forward. If Rumsfeld was alerted to the study group's potential impact, the aide said, he would quickly tell Cheney, who could, with a few words, scuttle the whole thing. Rice got through to Bush the next day, arguing that the thing was going to happen anyway, so he might as well get on board. To his credit, the President agreed.

After rejecting every name that Solomon & Co. proposed, Baker and Hamilton were left to choose their own panelists, and the commission went to work, gathering evidence, making a trip to Baghdad and hearing from more than 100 experts. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor developed a reputation for asking the best questions. Democratic power broker Vernon Jordan emerged as the group's political sage. Former Bill Clinton Defense chief William Perry cornered the military options--and would be a holdout on the final deal. In October, as the number of casualties in Iraq exploded, public support for Bush dropped through the floor. When Democrats swept the November elections, aides to several panelists told TIME that the commission would have more room to make sweeping proposals. Rumsfeld's resignation the next day cemented that feeling--which is not to say the commission thought it had any perfect solutions. "We did not think there were any good options on Iraq," one of the experts told TIME. "What we're really looking at are less-bad options."

But instead of making things easier, the elections actually made them harder. After Bush replaced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates, a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission who had served the first President Bush as head of the CIA, the psychoanalysis rampant in the media about Daddy's team coming back to save the prodigal son steamed everyone at the White House, from the President on down, and led the Administration to dig in its heels. Says a Baker confidant: "Everything that happened on Election Day made for extra work." It wasn't long before senior Administration officials were whispering that the diplomatic proposals coming out of Baker's shop would never fly. Realizing that with Gates moving to the Pentagon, the study group's report may have more impact than they had first thought, Democrats from all quarters began bombarding their allies on the panel with advice about how to stage an organized withdrawal and pressing for a precise drawdown timetable. Baker, who was in touch with the White House, resisted.