Baker’s Iraq Study Group To Recommend Troop Withdrawals

David Sanger and David Cloud for the NY Times report: The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations. The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding. I suspect the only way withdrawals will ever happen is if Democrats can get creative, and orchestrate domestic political conditions which compel Bush to choose between troop withdrawal and something worse, from his sociopath's perspective.