Biden-Gelb Plan for Iraq (THE SITE THAT JOE BIDEN DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE!)

President Bush does not have a strategy for victory in Iraq. His strategy is to prevent defeat and to hand the problem off to his successor. As a result, more and more Americans want to bring our troops home immediately, even at the risk of trading a dictator for chaos and a civil war that could become a regional war. Both are bad alternatives.

There is a third way. Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, and I have proposed a five-point plan to keep Iraq together, protect America's interests and bring our troops home.

Sectarian violence among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is now the major impediment to stability and progress in Iraq. No number of troops can solve that problem. The only way to hold Iraq together and create the conditions for our armed forces to responsibly withdraw is to give Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds incentives to pursue their interests peacefully. That requires a sustainable political settlement, which is the primary objective of our plan.

The plan would maintain a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions - as provided for in the Iraqi constitution. The central government would be responsible for common interests, like border security and the distribution of oil revenues. We would secure support from the Sunnis - who have no oil -- by guaranteeing them a proportionate share (about 20 percent) of oil revenues. We would increase economic aid, ask the oil-rich Arab Gulf states to fund it and tie all assistance to the protection of minority rights and the creation of a jobs program.

Per today's Wall Street Journal, "Biden Wanted to Break Up Iraq," (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121997008915881819.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries) "he even created a Web site to promote it: www.planforiraq.com. But there is no more talk about that Senate resolution. And the Web site has been quietly taken down."

It is obvious that the Obama campaign does not want people to see this Web site, so we are going to make sure people see it. The Biden-Gelb plan is available at http://web.archive.org/web/20061108171411/http://planforiraq.com/documents/pfi.pdf and now at http://www.stentorian.com/Obama/pfi.pdf. DOWNLOAD, COPY, AND CIRCULATE BECAUSE THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN IS OBVIOUSLY AFRAID OF THIS; HENCE THE DISAPPEARANCE OF PLANFORIRAQ.COM.

There is a third way that can achieve the two objectives most Americans share: to bring our troops home without leaving chaos behind. The idea is to maintain a unified Iraq by federalizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions. The central government would be responsible for common interests, like border security and the distribution of oil revenues. The plan would bind the Sunnis – who have no oil -- by guaranteeing them a proportionate share of oil revenues. It would convene an international conference to secure support for the power sharing arrangement and produce a regional nonaggression pact, overseen by a Contact Group of major powers. It would call on the U.S. military to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2007, with a residual force to keep Iraqis and their neighbors honest. It would increase economic aid but tie it to the protection of minority rights and the creation of a jobs program and seek funding from the oil-rich Gulf Arab states.

Now that the surge is working, Biden perhaps wants people to forget about this. The Wall Street Journal article certainly implies that there are problems with the Biden-Gelb plan.

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