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Iraq Study Group Rushed to Conclusions
// George Bush Will Wait for Other Reports
Hopes that the United States would change its course in Iraq in the wake of the recent publication of the Iraq Study Group’s report have turned out to be premature. Over the weekend George Bush’s inner circle made it clear that the president does not look upon the commission’s recommendations as a guide for action and that he plans not to lay all his cards on the table until he has had the opportunity to read other reports on Iraq.
The bipartisan commission headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton spent more than six months working on the report concerning Iraq and ways of normalizing the situation in the country before publicly presenting their conclusions last Wednesday. The commission’s conclusions were quite possibly the harshest criticism yet of Washington’s actions during the course of the Iraq campaign, and many rushed to predict that the report would force the president to undertake a radical review of his Iraq policies. According to a weekend poll conducted by Newsweek, 39% of Americans agreed with the report’s conclusions, and only 20% disagreed. Moreover, 68% of respondents believe that the United States is losing the war in Iraq.
Nevertheless, it has become increasingly clear over the last few days that the Bush administration does not intend to follow the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations. “Members of the Baker-Hamilton commission made it clear that they don't expect everybody to agree with [everything in the report],” said White House press secretary Tony Snow in a press briefing on Friday. But, he continued, “the President, as Commander-in-Chief, still has the obligation to take seriously every bit of analysis and advice he gets, and to make his own decisions.”
Mr. Baker has long cautioned the administration against treating the report, which includes 79 concrete but interconnected recommendations, as a “fruit salad” from which the president can pick out only the tastiest bits. Judging from Washington’s reaction to the report this far, however, that is exactly what Mr. Bush intends to do.
Doubt that the commission’s report, which described the current situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating,” will force George Bush to radically change his course was echoed by many in the president’s inner circle. Former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card admitted recently that many of the report’s recommendations were immediately dismissed by the White House as “unrealistic.” “It’s easy to talk abut taking these steps, but only in theory,” he said. “The very next day [after the report was published] the president was again using the word ‘victory.’ Believe me, that wasn’t a slip of the tongue,” said another White House staffer.
Many in the government are already convinced that the president will turn down the commission’s main recommendations, which call for American troops to be gradually withdrawn from Iraq by 2008 and for neighboring Syria and Iran to be enticed into supporting the normalization of the situation in the country. Already the White House is floating the possibility of increasing the number of soldiers in Baghdad in order to bring an end to the violence in the capital, if nowhere else. One proposal suggests an unusual division of labor under which American soldiers would focus on capturing al-Qaeda terrorists, while the Iraqi security forces would shoulder the responsibility for dealing with intrareligious strife.
The idea of encouraging neighboring Iran to help control the situation in Iraq has also been met with ambivalence in the White House. Tehran has already expressed its readiness to work with Washington, but only under certain conditions. In an address in Bahrain at the end of last week’s conference on security, Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced that Iran is open to dialog with the United States, but only if the US “changes its position.” “The first step for them is to express their readiness to exit Iraq,” said Mr. Mottaki, adding that the United States should also change its position on Iran’s nuclear program. Given Washington’s uncompromising stance on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, however, it is easy to assume that these conditions will not prove acceptable to the White House.
George Bush is so far keeping his own counsel on the matter of the Iraq Study Group’s report, and he is not likely to share his thoughts before he has had a chance to review several other reports on the situation in Iraq that are being prepared by the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council. Presumably, unlike the Baker-Hamilton report, the conclusions of all three of these reports will be fairly close to Mr. Bush’s own views and will thus find a warmer reception in the White House. In addition, the availability of assessments from several experts will allow the administration to present the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton report that it finds unprofitable and uncomfortable as just one of many points of view on the question of Iraq.
Natalya Portyakova
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 11, 2006
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