The Iraq Study Group
I find it hard at times to find anything or anyone in either of the political parties to be proud. But now comes a breath of fresh air, a group of stalwart statesmen to find a solution to the Iraq quagmire, lead by cochairs James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton.
It may have been a blessing in disguise for the Democrats when President George Bush was reelected a second term. I told some friends at the time, admittedly somewhat snidest, that the president’s reelection was deserving, he had earned the right to get us out of Iraq quandary.
I find it hard at times to find anything or anyone in either of the political parties to be proud. But now comes a breath of fresh air, a group of stalwart statesmen to find a solution to the Iraq quagmire, lead by cochairs James A. Baker and Lee Hamilton.
It may have been a blessing in disguise for the Democrats when President George Bush was reelected a second term. I told some friends at the time, admittedly somewhat snidest, that the president’s reelection was deserving, he had earned the right to get us out of Iraq quandary.
On Nov. 15, 2005 I wrote: “Our forces have gone beyond the call of duty in a mire of civil strife. If the “terrorist war” is lost it will not be on Iraqi soil – for the war extends far beyond. Iraqis will lose whatever is lost in Iraq, not American forces. Now, after two and a half years, it’s Iraqi’s responsibility to defend their country from a civil war.”
Now three and a half years, my opinion still holds, acknowledging there may be some adverse consequences to pay, beyond those already incurred, regardless of any strategy wisemen might bring to fruition. However, the wise statesmen of the Iraq Study Group will, hopefully, come up with a reasonable bipartisan solution to best serve our country and renew a common cause to do what’s right henceforth.
Now three and a half years, my opinion still holds, acknowledging there may be some adverse consequences to pay, beyond those already incurred, regardless of any strategy wisemen might bring to fruition. However, the wise statesmen of the Iraq Study Group will, hopefully, come up with a reasonable bipartisan solution to best serve our country and renew a common cause to do what’s right henceforth.
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G.O.P.’s Baker Hints Iraq Plan Needs Change (Read complete text attached or in today’s N. Y. Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/middleeast/09baker.html?th&emc=th)
Excerpt: The Iraq Study Group, created with the reluctant blessing of the White House, includes notable Republicans and Democrats, among them William J. Perry, a former defense secretary under President Clinton; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York; the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor; and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a longtime civil rights leader. Mr. Baker’s Democratic co-chairman is Lee H. Hamilton, the former Congressman who once served as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of the 9/11 commission.
G.O.P.’s Baker Hints Iraq Plan Needs Change (Read complete text attached or in today’s N. Y. Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/middleeast/09baker.html?th&emc=th)
Excerpt: The Iraq Study Group, created with the reluctant blessing of the White House, includes notable Republicans and Democrats, among them William J. Perry, a former defense secretary under President Clinton; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York; the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor; and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a longtime civil rights leader. Mr. Baker’s Democratic co-chairman is Lee H. Hamilton, the former Congressman who once served as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of the 9/11 commission.
________________________________
October 9, 2006: NYTimes
G.O.P.’s Baker Hints Iraq Plan Needs Change
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — James A. Baker III, the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan panel reassessing Iraq strategy for President Bush, said Sunday that he expected the panel would depart from Mr. Bush’s repeated calls to “stay the course,” and he strongly suggested that the White House enter direct talks with countries it had so far kept at arm’s length, including Iran and Syria.
“I believe in talking to your enemies,” he said in an interview on the ABC News program “This Week,” noting that he made 15 trips to Damascus, the Syrian capital, while serving Mr. Bush’s father as secretary of state.
“It’s got to be hard-nosed, it’s got to be determined,” Mr. Baker said. “You don’t give away anything, but in my view, it’s not appeasement to talk to your enemies.”
Mr. Bush refused to deal with Iran until this spring, when he said the United States would join negotiations with Tehran if it suspended enriching nuclear fuel. Iran has so far refused. Contacts with both Syria and North Korea have also been sharply limited.
But the “Iraq Study Group,” created by Mr. Baker last March with the encouragement of some members of Congress to come up with new ideas on Iraq strategy, has already talked to some representatives of Iran and Syria about Iraq’s future, he said.
His comments Sunday offered the first glimmer of what other members of his study group, in interviews over the past two weeks, have described as an effort to find a politically face-saving way for Mr. Bush slowly to extract the United States from the war. “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run,’ ” Mr. Baker said.
He explicitly rejected a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying that would invite Iran, Syria and “even our friends in the gulf” to fill the power vacuum. He also dismissed, as largely unworkable, a proposal by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to decentralize Iraq and give the country’s three major sectarian groups, the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, their own regions, distributing oil revenue to all. Mr. Baker said he had concluded “there’s no way to draw lines” in Iraq’s major cities, where ethnic groups are intermingled.
According to White House officials and commission members, Mr. Baker has been talking to President Bush and his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on a regular basis. Those colleagues say he is unlikely to issue suggestions that the president has not tacitly approved in advance.
“He’s a very loyal Republican, and you won’t see him go against Bush,” said a colleague of Mr. Baker, who asked not to be identified because the study group is keeping a low profile before it formally issues recommendations. “But he feels that the yearning for some responsible way out which would not damage American interests is palpable, and the frustration level is exceedingly high.”
At 76, Mr. Baker still enjoys a reputation as one of Washington’s craftiest bureaucratic operators and as a trusted adviser of the Bush family, which has enlisted his help for some of its deepest crises, including the second President Bush’s effort to win the vote recount in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. Mr. Baker served as White House chief of staff, as well as secretary of state under the first President Bush.
Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush’s former chief of staff, acknowledged recently that he had twice suggested that Mr. Baker would be a good replacement for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Bush rejected that advice, and some associates of Mr. Baker say they do not believe he is interested, at his age, in taking the job, which could put him in the position of having to carry out his group’s advice.
Those proposals — which he has said must be both bipartisan and unanimous — could very well give Mr. Bush some political latitude, should he decide to adopt strategies that he had once rejected, like setting deadlines for a phased withdrawal of American forces.
Given his extraordinary loyalty to the Bush family — Mr. Baker was present on Saturday at the formal christening of a new aircraft carrier named for the first President Bush — it was notable on Sunday that Mr. Baker also joined the growing number of Republicans who are trying to create some space between themselves and the White House.
On Sunday, on “This Week,” Mr. Baker was shown a video of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who said last week that Iraq was “drifting sideways” and urged consideration of a “change of course” if the Iraqi government could not restore order in two or three months. The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has offered a similar warning to the Iraqi government.
Asked if he agreed with that timetable, Mr. Baker said, “Yes, absolutely. And we’re taking a look at other alternatives.”
The Iraq Study Group, created with the reluctant blessing of the White House, includes notable Republicans and Democrats, among them William J. Perry, a former defense secretary under President Clinton; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York; the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor; and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a longtime civil rights leader. Mr. Baker’s Democratic co-chairman is Lee H. Hamilton, the former Congressman who once served as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of the 9/11 commission.
In interviews, members of the study group have privately expressed concern that within months, whatever course the group recommended could be overtaken by the chaos in Iraq. “I think the big question is whether we can come up with something before it’s too late,” one member said late last month, after the group had met in Washington to assess its conclusions after a trip to Baghdad. “There’s a real sense that the clock is ticking, that Bush is desperate for a change, but no one in the White House can bring themselves to say so with this election coming.”
Like other members, he declined to speak on the record, saying public comments should come only from Mr. Baker or Mr. Hamilton.
Several members said they were struck during their visit to Baghdad by how many Americans based there — political and intelligence officers as well as members of the military — said they feared that the United States was stuck between two bad alternatives: pulling back and watching sectarian violence soar, or remaining a crucial part of the new effort to secure Baghdad, at the cost of much higher American casualties.
It was a measure of how much the situation had deteriorated that only one member of the group, former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, ventured beyond the protected walls of the Green Zone, the American and government center of Baghdad. The study group is just now finishing its interviews, and Mr. Baker has not yet begun to draft the report, members said.
Some who have already met with the group, like Mr. Biden, who may seek the Democratic nomination for president, have emerged saying they think their ideas are being heard. On Friday, Mr. Biden said he thought he saw “heads nodding up and down” about his ideas on creating autonomous regions of the country, but Mr. Baker made clear on Sunday that he was not among them.
“Experts on Iraq have suggested that, if we do that, that in itself will trigger a huge civil war because the major cities in Iraq are mixed,” Mr. Baker said.
Mr. Baker has been critical of how the Bush administration conducted post-invasion operations, and he has not backed away from statements he made in his 1995 memoir, in which he described opposing the ouster of Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the book, he said he feared that such action might lead to a civil war, “even if Saddam were captured and his regime toppled, American forces would still be confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government.”
On Sunday, the interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, said, “It’s exactly what’s happened now, isn’t it?” Mr. Baker replied, “A lot of it.”
October 9, 2006: NYTimes
G.O.P.’s Baker Hints Iraq Plan Needs Change
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — James A. Baker III, the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan panel reassessing Iraq strategy for President Bush, said Sunday that he expected the panel would depart from Mr. Bush’s repeated calls to “stay the course,” and he strongly suggested that the White House enter direct talks with countries it had so far kept at arm’s length, including Iran and Syria.
“I believe in talking to your enemies,” he said in an interview on the ABC News program “This Week,” noting that he made 15 trips to Damascus, the Syrian capital, while serving Mr. Bush’s father as secretary of state.
“It’s got to be hard-nosed, it’s got to be determined,” Mr. Baker said. “You don’t give away anything, but in my view, it’s not appeasement to talk to your enemies.”
Mr. Bush refused to deal with Iran until this spring, when he said the United States would join negotiations with Tehran if it suspended enriching nuclear fuel. Iran has so far refused. Contacts with both Syria and North Korea have also been sharply limited.
But the “Iraq Study Group,” created by Mr. Baker last March with the encouragement of some members of Congress to come up with new ideas on Iraq strategy, has already talked to some representatives of Iran and Syria about Iraq’s future, he said.
His comments Sunday offered the first glimmer of what other members of his study group, in interviews over the past two weeks, have described as an effort to find a politically face-saving way for Mr. Bush slowly to extract the United States from the war. “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run,’ ” Mr. Baker said.
He explicitly rejected a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying that would invite Iran, Syria and “even our friends in the gulf” to fill the power vacuum. He also dismissed, as largely unworkable, a proposal by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to decentralize Iraq and give the country’s three major sectarian groups, the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, their own regions, distributing oil revenue to all. Mr. Baker said he had concluded “there’s no way to draw lines” in Iraq’s major cities, where ethnic groups are intermingled.
According to White House officials and commission members, Mr. Baker has been talking to President Bush and his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on a regular basis. Those colleagues say he is unlikely to issue suggestions that the president has not tacitly approved in advance.
“He’s a very loyal Republican, and you won’t see him go against Bush,” said a colleague of Mr. Baker, who asked not to be identified because the study group is keeping a low profile before it formally issues recommendations. “But he feels that the yearning for some responsible way out which would not damage American interests is palpable, and the frustration level is exceedingly high.”
At 76, Mr. Baker still enjoys a reputation as one of Washington’s craftiest bureaucratic operators and as a trusted adviser of the Bush family, which has enlisted his help for some of its deepest crises, including the second President Bush’s effort to win the vote recount in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. Mr. Baker served as White House chief of staff, as well as secretary of state under the first President Bush.
Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush’s former chief of staff, acknowledged recently that he had twice suggested that Mr. Baker would be a good replacement for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Bush rejected that advice, and some associates of Mr. Baker say they do not believe he is interested, at his age, in taking the job, which could put him in the position of having to carry out his group’s advice.
Those proposals — which he has said must be both bipartisan and unanimous — could very well give Mr. Bush some political latitude, should he decide to adopt strategies that he had once rejected, like setting deadlines for a phased withdrawal of American forces.
Given his extraordinary loyalty to the Bush family — Mr. Baker was present on Saturday at the formal christening of a new aircraft carrier named for the first President Bush — it was notable on Sunday that Mr. Baker also joined the growing number of Republicans who are trying to create some space between themselves and the White House.
On Sunday, on “This Week,” Mr. Baker was shown a video of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who said last week that Iraq was “drifting sideways” and urged consideration of a “change of course” if the Iraqi government could not restore order in two or three months. The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has offered a similar warning to the Iraqi government.
Asked if he agreed with that timetable, Mr. Baker said, “Yes, absolutely. And we’re taking a look at other alternatives.”
The Iraq Study Group, created with the reluctant blessing of the White House, includes notable Republicans and Democrats, among them William J. Perry, a former defense secretary under President Clinton; former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York; the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor; and Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a longtime civil rights leader. Mr. Baker’s Democratic co-chairman is Lee H. Hamilton, the former Congressman who once served as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of the 9/11 commission.
In interviews, members of the study group have privately expressed concern that within months, whatever course the group recommended could be overtaken by the chaos in Iraq. “I think the big question is whether we can come up with something before it’s too late,” one member said late last month, after the group had met in Washington to assess its conclusions after a trip to Baghdad. “There’s a real sense that the clock is ticking, that Bush is desperate for a change, but no one in the White House can bring themselves to say so with this election coming.”
Like other members, he declined to speak on the record, saying public comments should come only from Mr. Baker or Mr. Hamilton.
Several members said they were struck during their visit to Baghdad by how many Americans based there — political and intelligence officers as well as members of the military — said they feared that the United States was stuck between two bad alternatives: pulling back and watching sectarian violence soar, or remaining a crucial part of the new effort to secure Baghdad, at the cost of much higher American casualties.
It was a measure of how much the situation had deteriorated that only one member of the group, former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, ventured beyond the protected walls of the Green Zone, the American and government center of Baghdad. The study group is just now finishing its interviews, and Mr. Baker has not yet begun to draft the report, members said.
Some who have already met with the group, like Mr. Biden, who may seek the Democratic nomination for president, have emerged saying they think their ideas are being heard. On Friday, Mr. Biden said he thought he saw “heads nodding up and down” about his ideas on creating autonomous regions of the country, but Mr. Baker made clear on Sunday that he was not among them.
“Experts on Iraq have suggested that, if we do that, that in itself will trigger a huge civil war because the major cities in Iraq are mixed,” Mr. Baker said.
Mr. Baker has been critical of how the Bush administration conducted post-invasion operations, and he has not backed away from statements he made in his 1995 memoir, in which he described opposing the ouster of Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the book, he said he feared that such action might lead to a civil war, “even if Saddam were captured and his regime toppled, American forces would still be confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government.”
On Sunday, the interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, said, “It’s exactly what’s happened now, isn’t it?” Mr. Baker replied, “A lot of it.”
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