USA/FILE: Iraq Study Group contributors say the panel's report may not live up to expectations

As the 10 principal members of the Iraq Study Group in the United States debate recommendations on how to bring peace to Iraq, contributors to the Group admitted on Monday (November 27), the report may ultimately not live up to expectations and that some viewpoints were not adequately considered. Since the Group was established in March 2006, it has gathered 44 experts in working groups to develop a plan to present to the Bush administration. The group's long-anticipated report is expected to go before U.S. President George W. Bush in December, but according to two of the experts from the working groups, it could disappoint those who have high expectations. Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at Brookings Institution which participated in the Iraq Study working groups. "Why do you assume that just because they've had the opportunity to convene this group for a year that all of the sudden you're going to have huge new insight. The 9/11 commission went back and looked at a lot of intelligence records, did a much more systematic understanding of the problem that caused the 9/11 tragedy or that failed to prevent it. There was real research being done. In the Iraq study group by contrast you have a constant conversation about ideas that are already in the public domain and ideas that have already been proposed. So it's a fundamental different thing than the 9/11 commission and therefore much less likely to lead to huge breakthroughs," he said. Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, was also cautionary about what the Group can produce. "I don't think it's a panacea. I hope it did some useful thinking and some work in it. There were certain inadequacies. I think If it comes with something useful for President Bush that's great," said May. May was one of two neoconservatives, or "neo-cons" among the 44 experts and he was part of the team presenting the option "Stability First," which advocated stabilizing Baghdad and making reconciliation efforts with insurgents. May said his views were in the minority. "Most members of the group came in believing that we should get out of Iraq and that it was their mission to talk about how you do that. And there was a minority in the group who thought no, our job is to come up with creative, out of the box solutions, options for the President on how to salvage what we acknowledge is a very difficult situation." Another "neocon" who felt the panel was stacked against him, Michael Rubin, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority resigned. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and one of the experts contributing to the study group said the group was proceeding with a "cautiousness" that might prevent them from producing the bold ideas necessary to help bring peace to Iraq. "It's very easy and very safe for the organizers to bring in all the people who've written about Iraq whereas if they were going to say let's develop this option or that option in more detail then they have to be more proactive and they have to be a little more prone to take risks and to perhaps do something that Jim Baker or Lee Hamilton might not really be happy with them doing in the end - or an idea that might flop. You don't want to go out there and propose a complete carving up of Iraq at a time when the President of the United States and of Iraq are saying they are adamantly against the idea unless you have the foresight to recognize we may not have that much choice." O'Hanlon advocates the "soft partition" of Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities and said this was one of the ideas proposed, also set forth by U.S. Delaware Senator Joe Biden, that did not get adequate research and consideration by the panel. "And so I think given how much the obvious ideas are not working in Iraq, we need more dramatic ideas, we need more research into them. And I'm not convinced the study group has really generated that," O'Hanlon said. The Iraq Study Group is led by former Secretary of State James Baker and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana The New York Times said a draft report was to be debated by the Iraq Study Group in meetings beginning by Monday and that eagerly awaited proposals on a new direction in Iraq, would include an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative to include direct talks with Iran and Syria. The group's recommendations will be sent to the White House, which is considering a change in strategy in Iraq to allow it to start pulling out some of its 140,000 troops. A draft report prepared for an influential panel considering U.S. alternatives for Iraq urges direct talks with Iran and Syria, but sets no schedule for troop withdrawal, The New York Times reported on Monday. The draft was to serve as a basis for discussions by the panel's 10 members, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who convening in Washington on Monday. Group members including Vernon Jordan and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. The meeting could extend beyond its two scheduled days, the Times said. The group's long-anticipated report, preparation of which was reported well before Democrats' congressional election victories November 7, is expected to be presented to President George W. Bush next month. Bush, scheduled to begin a trip on Monday that includes a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan, is not bound to accept the group's recommendations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security Council are also working on similar studies. But the panel is likely to command significant influence because of its bipartisan makeup and its co-chairmanship by Baker, a Republican who is very close to Bush's father and served in the elder Bush's administration.

ITN Source | November 28, 2006

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