Following Jim Baker's Secret Plan to End the Iraq War (that's still under development)

Laura Rozen has been following the manueverings of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), the Baker-Hamilton group that is working on what Baker has been parading as something like a Secret Plan to End the Iraq War. At her War and Piece blog she writes in Counter-ISG operations 11/10/06:

Here's a guess for a consensus way forward being cobbled together: Something like a limited time, last-ditch troop surge to Baghdad (people are talking about needing 30k over the 15k recently there), followed by a redeployment to a half dozen bases in (or alternatively some outside of) Iraq, with occasional counterinsurgency operations in al-Anbar, beefed up training of Iraqi forces, and logistics/support, drawing down to about 60k US troops in Iraq over the coming year; or variations thereof. Efforts to mitigate/prevent a civil war from becoming a regional war (some sort of conferring with the meddling neighbors, if that becomes politically acceptable here).

Apparently the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Peter Pace has recently brought together twelve people with extensive experience in Iraq, including three former Iraq commanders, among them H.R. McMaster (yanked back from London) and Peter Mansoor, at the Pentagon for sixty days to brainstorm options - a kind of parallel, internal-Pentagon ISG.

In the TAPPED blog of 11/10/06, she cites a "well-informed correspondent" who thinks the ISG is working up to their recommendations this way:

In other words, it looks like the following process is unfolding: at time 't' the ISG meets with Bush/Dems, floats a few ideas, gets feedback, and integrates the feedback into its sense of what kind of bipartisan strategy is possible; then at 't+1' the ISG offers its 'independent' recommendations that become the baseline for a bipartisan change in strategy.

Michael Abramowitz and Thomas Ricks report on the ISG in Panel May Have Few Good Options to Offer Washington Post 11/12/06:

Those familiar with the panel's work predict that the ultimate recommendations will not appear novel and that there are few, if any, good options left facing the country. Many of the ideas reportedly being considered - more aggressive regional diplomacy with Syria and Iran, greater emphasis on training Iraqi troops, or focusing on a new political deal between warring Shiites and Sunni - have either been tried or have limited chances of success, in the view of many experts on Iraq. Baker is also exploring whether a broader U.S. initiative in tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict is needed to help stabilize the region.

Given the grave predicament the group faces, its focus is now as much on finding a political solution for the United States as on a plan that would bring peace to Iraq. With Republicans and Democrats so bitterly divided over the war, Baker and Hamilton believe that it is key that their group produce a consensus plan, according to those who have spoken with them.

That could appeal to both parties. Democrats would have something to support after a campaign in which they criticized Bush's Iraq policy without offering many specifics of their own. And with support for its Iraq policy fast evaporating even within its own party, the White House might find in the group's plan either a politically acceptable exit strategy or a cover for a continued effort to prop up the new democratically-elected government in Baghdad. (my emphasis)

It sounds to me an awful lot like Bush family fixer Jim Baker is trying to come up with a way to snooker Democrats into endorsing some new stop-gap plan that basically means continuing the war. I was glad to see that Carl Levin, the incoming head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, came out on Sunday for a six-month withdrawal timetable. The Dems need to take a position like that rather than get hooked into some phony "bipartisan" arrangement by which they agree to mute their criticism of Bush's disastrous Iraq policy.

I have less than total confidence in Levin, who voted to support torture this past year and even sponsored a measure to remove habeus corpus rights from the prisoners arbitrarily designated by the President as "enemy combatants" who have been held captive and tortured for years. If he'll cave on something that basic, he's liable to cave on anything.

Still, to paraphrase Rummy, you fight for the Constitution with the Democratic Party you've got, not with the one you might like to have.

Music I'm listening to: Steve Earle, "Snake Oil"

Tags: carl levin, iraq study group, iraq war, james baker