Iraq panel urges combat troops out by ‘08

WASHINGTON – The bipartisan Iraq Study Group will recommend to President Bush that he threaten to reduce economic and military support for Iraq’s government if it fails to meet specific benchmarks to improve security in the country, a source familiar with the report said Tuesday.

The congressionally chartered panel, due to deliver its much-anticipated report to Bush at the White House this morning and then unveil it to the public, outlined diplomatic and military ideas intended to change the course of the 44-month-old war. Among other things, the source said, the report urges Bush to aggressively tackle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to reduce broader regional tensions fueling the Iraq conflict.

The latest details from the commission’s report flesh out a plan that also calls for the United States to withdraw nearly all combat units by early 2008 while leaving behind tens of thousands of troops to advise, train and embed with Iraqi forces. The report also suggests that the Bush administration open talks with Iran and Syria about ending the violence in Iraq and proposes holding a regional conference to bring together Iraq’s neighbors.

Some proposals in the report parallel measures the administration is already using or considering, but several challenge Bush in areas in which he has refused to compromise. The president has rejected talking with Iran and Syria, resisted linking the Iraq war to the Palestinian issue and dismissed timetables for troop withdrawals, although the panel cites 2008 as a goal rather than a firm deadline. He also has declined to punish Iraqis for not making progress on security.

Although the study group will present its plan as a much-needed course change in Iraq, many of its advisers concluded that the war is essentially already lost, according to private correspondence obtained Tuesday and interviews with members. The best the commission could put forward would be the “least bad” of many bad options, former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer wrote.

An early working draft from July stated that “there is even doubt that any level of resources could achieve the administration’s stated goals, given the illiberal and undemocratic political forces, many of them Islamic fundamentalists, that will dominate large parts of the country for a long time.”

In private e-mail exchanges over the past two weeks, members of the commission’s working group, including former ambassadors, military officers and CIA analysts, expressed equally bleak outlooks for Iraq and skepticism that Bush would accept the panel’s recommendations.

The report that resulted is a mix of initiatives and conclusions that cover an array of areas, including a long diplomatic section, a security section and the proposed benchmarks for Iraqi leaders. Former secretary of state James Baker briefed the president on its conclusions over lunch Tuesday.

Baker and his co-chairman, former congressman Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., and the rest of the 10-member panel will meet with Bush at the White House at 7 a.m. today to formally hand over the report then travel to Capitol Hill for an 11 a.m. news conference. The report will be released on four Web sites and is being published as a mass-market paperback today by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, under the title “The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward – A New Approach.”