Republicans as well as Democrats appear ready to act on the pending "recommendations" of the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton group which was set up earlier this year by the Bush administration to lay the political groundwork for a retreat. Rumsfeld's resignation indicates that the administration has accepted the sweeping DP election victory as confirmation that there is no longer any public support for continuing the occupation.
Significantly, Rumsfeld's replacement, Robert Gates, is a member of the Baker group, and is closely tied to Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the earliest and most prominent critics of the neocon adventure in Iraq.
Gates and Brzezinski have previously recommended that Iran and Syria be enlisted to help facilitate the US withdrawal. The US will require that its retreat is orderly and that it is leaving behind an Iraqi government which is seen to be broadly representative and nonaligned. The Iranians and Syrians will be counted upon to secure the respective cooperation of the warring Shia and Sunni factions to this end. ==============================
Rumsfeld's Ouster Transforms Iraq Debate
Gates, His Successor, Took Different Tack in Gulf War; A Role for Iran and Syria? Baker Panel Seen as Crucial
By NEIL KING JR., YOCHI DREAZEN and GREG JAFFE Wall Street Journal November 9, 2006
WASHINGTON -- The resignation yesterday of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in the wake of the Democrats' decisive electoral victory, now opens the door for the biggest change of U.S. policy in Iraq since American troops got bogged down there three years ago.
After gaining substantial power in Congress, Democrats indicated that they intend to push for a different course in Iraq. The planned departure of Mr. Rumsfeld, one of the war's chief architects, signaled that President Bush might be open to far-reaching changes. To his critics, Mr. Rumsfeld had become a symbol of an administration that they saw as unbending and defensive in its handling of the war.
Now come two decisive questions: Can Democrats agree on a unified approach for pulling U.S. troops out? And will Mr. Bush show willingness to weigh those ideas, which he has dismissed for months on the grounds that they would essentially hand victory to the terrorists? Mr. Bush's appointment of Robert Gates, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, to replace Mr. Rumsfeld signaled to some that the president might be open to changes.
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Democrats, while divided over details on how to proceed, have coalesced around some core concepts. These include a belief that, within months, the U.S. should begin pulling back its forces in Iraq, which currently total about 150,000, and push Iraqi troops to the fore. About 50,000 U.S. troops would be left in Iraq. Some would focus on advising and mentoring Iraqi forces. Most of the rest would serve as an emergency force that could swoop in to help Iraqi forces in trouble. Many Democrats also support the idea of holding negotiations with regional powerhouses such as Iran and Syria, which maintain deep influence in Iraq.
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The most important figure at the moment may be a man who comes from neither party's leadership. Former Secretary of State James Baker, an old Bush family friend, is heading a bipartisan task force that is expected soon to issue recommendations for future U.S. policy in Iraq. Mr. Bush has said he plans to take seriously the proposals of the task force, which is co-chaired by former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat. The president yesterday said he plans to meet with task force members next week.
The commission's influence is likely to be bolstered by the fact that one of its members is Mr. Gates, who will take over for Mr. Rumsfeld. The arrival of Mr. Gates in the upper echelons of the Bush national-security team marks the return to prominence of someone closely associated with the Iraq policy views of the president's father, who took a markedly different approach to Iraq during the Gulf War 15 years ago.
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Mr. Gates's boss at that time was Brent Scowcroft, then national security adviser, who argued that driving into Iraq would be a mistake. The first President Bush apparently agreed, as did Mr. Baker, then secretary of state.
The Baker commission is widely expected to call for talking directly to Iran and Syria, both American foes, about problems in Iraq, in hopes of getting their help in quelling the violence.
Mr. Gates had earlier advocated direct talks with Iran In the summer of 2004, Mr. Gates and President Carter's former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski co-chaired a task force that called for direct dialogue, arguing that a lack of American engagement with Iran had harmed American interests.
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The new defense secretary is more likely to oversee a shift of the U.S. effort away from providing security in urban areas such as Baghdad to a more advisory role -- in keeping with many Democrats' proposals. In such a scenario, the Pentagon would turn big U.S. units into quick reaction forces to bail out Iraqi soldiers and advisers who get overrun. Teams of American advisers who live and work with Iraqi units would increase in number. U.S. commanders are also debating how to increase the size and number of provincial reconstruction teams, which oversee economic development and local governance.
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Because the Bush administration may be reluctant to appear too open to Democratic proposals, policy recommendations from the commission headed by Messrs. Baker and Hamilton, known as the Iraq Study Group, could be critical. The panel is set to release its proposal within weeks.
"I predict that the vehicle for a change in Iraq policy will be the Baker-Hamilton commission. It gives Bush a way of saving face," says Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. If Democrats win control of the Senate, Mr. Biden would take over as chairman of its Foreign Relations Committee. "You have to give Bush a way out, because if you back him into a corner, he gets too blindly stubborn to change course," he says.
Democrats are almost certain to back the commission's recommendations, which are expected to include calls for a regional summit with Iraq's neighbors. Several leading Republicans, such as Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have also said they are likely to back the panel's proposals.
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Top Democrats disagree on some important points. The central plank of Sen. Biden's plan calls for Iraq to be divided into three semiautonomous regions -- one largely Shiite, one Sunni and the last Kurdish -- each with its own proportionate share of Iraq's oil wealth. Some prominent Democrats have called that a recipe for massive sectarian strife.
New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton backs the idea of an oil trust that would guarantee that each Iraqi gets a cut from the country's oil revenues instead of divvying it up by region or ethnic identity.