Group urges more intense diplomatic efforts leading to troop withdrawals

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's policy in Iraq "is not working," a high-level commission said Wednesday in a blunt, bleak assessment that called for an urgent diplomatic attempt to stabilize the country and allow withdrawal of most U.S. combat troops by early 2008.\nAfter nearly four years of war and the deaths of more than 2,900 U.S. troops, the situation is "grave and deteriorating," the bipartisan panel said. It also warned, "The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing."\nIt recommended the United States reduce political, military or economic support for Iraq if the government in Baghdad cannot make substantial progress toward providing for its own security.\nThe report said Bush should put aside misgivings and engage Syria, Iran and the leaders of insurgent forces in negotiations on Iraq's future, to begin by year's end. It urged him to revive efforts at a broader Middle East peace. Barring a significant change, it warned of a slide toward chaos.\nIn a slap at the Pentagon, the commission said there is significant underreporting of the actual level of violence in the country. It also faulted the U.S. intelligence effort, saying the government "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias."\nOn the highly emotional issue of troop withdrawals, the commission warned against either a precipitous pullback or an open-ended commitment to a large deployment.\n"Military priorities must change," the report said, toward a goal of training, equipping and advising Iraqi forces. "We should seek to complete the training and equipping mission by the end of the first quarter of 2008."\nThe commission recommended the number of U.S. troops embedded to train Iraqis should increase dramatically, from 3,000-4,000 currently to 10,000-20,000. Commission member William Perry, defense secretary in the Clinton administration, said those could be drawn from combat brigades already in Iraq.\nBush received the report in an early morning meeting at the White House with commission members. He pledged to treat each proposal seriously and act in a "timely fashion."\nThe report intensifies pressure on the president to change direction, but he is under no obligation to follow its recommendations. Still to come are options being developed in separate studies by the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. The White House says he will make decisions within weeks.\n"If the president is serious about the need for change in Iraq, he will find Democrats ready to work with him in a bipartisan fashion to find a way to end the war as quickly as possible," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who is in line to become speaker when the new Congress convenes in January.\n"The president has the ball in his court now ... and we're going to be watching very closely," said Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who will take over as Senate majority leader in January.\n Bush was flanked at the White House meeting by the panel's co-chairmen, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who is also the director of the IU Center of Congress, in a scene -- a president praising the work of a group that had just concluded his policy had led to chaos and risked worse.\n"Many Americans are understandably dissatisfied," Hamilton said later at a news conference that marked the formal release of the results of the commission's eight-month labors.\n"There is no magic bullet," said Baker.\nThe report painted a grim picture of Iraq nearly four years after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein. It urged Bush to embrace steps he has thus far rejected, including involving Syria and Iran in negotiations over Iraq's future.\nIt warned that if the situation continues to deteriorate, there is a risk of a "slide toward chaos (that) could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe"