Elite panel ready to map plan on Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, voiced confidence Saturday that the United States would not abandon its mission in this violence-racked country amid a post-election re-evaluation of Iraq strategy. "The weeks and months ahead will require courage and determination," Casey said at a Veterans Day naturalization ceremony for 75 U.S. troops at Baghdad's Camp Victory. "But succeed we will."

His comments were among his first public statements since the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week.

Washington political insiders have speculated that Casey and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also at the ceremony, could leave their posts following the Republican Party's defeat Tuesday at the polls. Both men quickly left Saturday's ceremony after reading prepared statements.

In Washington, meanwhile, the re-evaluation will begin in earnest Monday. On that day, a panel of prestigious Americans will begin deliberations to chart a new course on Iraq, with the goal of trying to stabilize the country with a different U.S. strategy and possibly begin withdrawing more than 140,000 troops.

Tuesday's dramatic election results, widely seen as a repudiation of the Bush Iraq policy, have thrust the 10-member, bipartisan Iraq Study Group into an unusual position, similar to that played by the 9/11 commission.

This panel, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, may play a decisive role in reshaping the U.S. position in Iraq, according to lawmakers and administration officials.

Those familiar with the panel's work predict the ultimate recommendations will not appear novel and that the country has few, if any, good options remaining. Many of the ideas reportedly being considered - more aggressive regional diplomacy with Syria and Iran, greater emphasis on training Iraqi troops or focusing on a new political deal between warring Shiite and Sunni factions - have been tried or have limited chances of success, in the view of many experts on Iraq.

Baker is also exploring whether a broader U.S. initiative in tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict is needed to help stabilize the region.

Given the grave predicament the group faces, its focus is now as much on finding a political solution for the United States as a plan that would bring peace to Iraq. With Republicans and Democrats so bitterly divided over the war, Baker and Hamilton consider a consensus plan of key importance, according to those who have spoken with them.

That could appeal to both parties. Democrats would have something to support after a campaign in which they criticized Bush's Iraq policy without offering many specifics of their own. With support for its Iraq policy fast evaporating even within its own party, the White House might find in the group's plan a politically acceptable exit strategy or cover for a continued effort to prop up the new democratically elected government in Baghdad.

"Baker's objectives for the Iraq Study Group are grounded in his conviction that Iraq is the central foreign policy issue confronting the United States and that the only way to address that issue successfully is to first build a bipartisan consensus," said Arnold Kanter, who served as undersecretary of state under Baker during the first Bush administration.

But the election may have made the job even tougher by emboldening the panel's Democrats, said people familiar with the panel's deliberations. The election "sent a huge signal," said one of these sources, who added that the panel is trying to come to grips with whether the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can solve Iraq's problems.

While Baker has been testing the waters for some time to determine how much change in Iraq policy the White House will tolerate, Hamilton faces the perhaps now even-more-difficult challenge of cajoling Democrats like Leon Panetta, White House chief of staff during the Clinton administration, and power broker Vernon Jordan to sign on to a plan that falls short of a phased troop withdrawal, the position of many congressional Democrats.

In a brief interview, Hamilton conceded the obstacles ahead and emphasized that no decisions had been made. "We need to get [the report] drafted, number one," Hamilton said. "We need to reach agreement, and that may not be possible."

When formed last spring by Congress, the Iraq Study Group was little known beyond elite circles of the U.S. foreign policy world. Now its work has become perhaps the most eagerly awaited Washington report in many years - recommendations are now expected early next month - with many lawmakers of both parties saying they are looking for answers to the troubled U.S. mission in Iraq.

Indeed, the White House, which had been skeptical the group will have much new to say, has been notably more receptive since the election.

"If these recommendations help bring greater consensus for Republicans and Democrats, I think that could be very helpful," said Dan Bartlett, counselor to Bush, though he added, "If there were a rifle-shot solution we would have already pulled the trigger."

Bush, Vice President Cheney and Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, will meet with members of the commission Monday.

During three days of deliberations, the panel also will hear by video link from British Prime Minister Tony Blair - who sources said has been anxious to talk to the group - as well as consult with the Democratic shadow foreign policy Cabinet, including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Sandy Berger, national security adviser.

Member of Iraq advisory group offers somber analysis

By Frank Davies

San Jose Mercury News

WASHINGTON - The situation in Iraq is "even worse than we thought," with key Iraqi leaders showing no willingness to compromise to avoid increasing violence, said Leon Panetta, a member of the high-powered advisory group that will recommend new options for the war.

The Iraq Study Group, including Panetta, plans to meet with President Bush and his national security team Monday at the White House, and gather more data on the war through briefings and interviews this week. Panetta was chief of staff in the Clinton White House.

The blue-ribbon group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, plans to make recommendations to the Bush administration and Congress next month on new ways to handle the war. Members said they wanted to wait until after the election, to remove a debate about Iraq from campaign pressures.

After the election, their influence grew and their job became more urgent.

Fueled by discontent over the war, the Democrats scored a sweeping victory, retaking the House and the Senate. U.S. casualties have mounted in recent weeks. Bush signaled new flexibility on Iraq last week by replacing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with former CIA chief Robert Gates - a member of the Iraq Study Group before accepting his new job.

Many officials in Washington hope that this group of insiders will offer a way out of Iraq, and give some political cover to Bush and a Democratic Congress.

"This week, the pressure on us just went up a few hundred degrees," Panetta said Friday. He is a former Democratic congressman who heads the Panetta Institute at California State University-Monterey Bay.

Panetta would not discuss the options the group is considering, noting that members have not reached a consensus yet, but talked about what he has learned about Iraq. The group spent three days in Baghdad in early September and has been briefed by military, intelligence and diplomatic officials.

Private assessments by government officials are much more grim than what is said in public, Panetta said, "and we left some of those sessions shaking our heads over how bad it is in Iraq."

U.S. forces can't control sectarian violence and powerful militias. One of the most disturbing findings, Panetta said, is that many Shiite religious leaders who are a big part of the government have no interest in deals or compromises with Sunnis and other groups, and are "playing for time because they say it's their show."

After years of Bush administration rhetoric about establishing democracy in Iraq, Panetta said the only achievable goal is a rough stability, "which can't be done by the military. It requires political reconciliation."

One scaled-down goal, he added, is "how do you maintain a low-level civil war so it doesn't blow up into a full-scale civil war?"

The Iraq group is looking at an array of options, including a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces, an accelerated training of Iraqi forces, and diplomatic efforts to involve Iraq's neighbors, according to several media accounts.

Some congressional leaders and retired generals criticized Rumsfeld for arrogance and an inability to admit mistakes and make adjustments in Iraq. Gates will be different, Panetta said.

"He's an old-school pragmatist, like Baker and Brent Scowcroft," Panetta said. "He's flexible and wants to get the job done. He always asked incisive questions, and knows what went wrong in Iraq."

Gates expressed his frustration with the administration's Iraq policy during a visit last year to the Bay Area.

He shared the stage with former Clinton administration national security adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger at a May 2005 lecture at the Panetta Institute.

Both men expressed surprise that resentment of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere had not resulted in suicide bomb attacks inside the United States.

"I too am puzzled by the fact that there haven't been suicide bombers," Gates said. "That's not an invitation, just an observation. We should count ourselves very fortunate."

Berger and Gates both were critical of the intelligence apparatus that allowed President Bush to receive false information concluding that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

"Fundamentally, it was just a lousy piece of work," Gates said.

The key to a new policy on Iraq, Panetta said, is whether Bush will be flexible, and whether Democratic leaders in Congress will try to work with a president who said during the campaign that voting for Democrats would help terrorists.

"Both sides have been in trench warfare for months, and the real question is whether they will be able to put down their grenades and bayonets and pick up the tools you need to get something done," he said.

The seismic shift in power this week reminded Panetta of 1994, when he was in the Clinton White House, rocked by the rejection of voters and the loss of Congress to the GOP.

"We were in a state of shock for days, and then we adjusted," he said. "You can actually get things done in a divided government."

The Democrats' big victory Tuesday also reminded Panetta of voter discontent in California during the 2003 recall election: "Voters were angry over gridlock, extreme partisanship, the failure to deal with crises - and they took it out on the party in power."

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/politics/15997141.htm

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