Searching for a New Policy
Responding to voter concerns about Iraq, members of Congress in 2005 proposed the
creation of a blue-ribbon commission to study the situation in Iraq and recommend
policy alternatives. The ten-member, bipartisan Iraq Study Group began work early in
2006 under the chairmanship of former secretary of state James A. Baker III (a long-
time associate of the Bush family) and former House member Lee H. Hamilton, an
Indiana Democrat who had chaired the foreign affairs and intelligence committees and
was widely respected in Washington. The commission held several hearings and trav-
eled to Iraq, but announced that it would withhold publishing its recommendations
until after November 2006 midterm congressional elections to keep its findings out of
the partisan spotlight.
The Baker-Hamilton report, issued on December 6, 2006, confirmed the obvious—
that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating”—and it raised serious ques-
tions about whether the use of military force would succeed in bringing the violence
in Iraq under control. The report offered seventy-nine recommendations, most of
which involved minor shifts in policy or bureaucratic procedures in Washington. The
single most controversial recommendation suggested that the administration conduct
negotiations with Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, as part of an international
conference to find a political solution to the violence. The Bush administration had
refused to have high-level contacts with Syria in recent years and had embraced the
long-running U.S. policy of shunning Iran.
President Bush politely accepted the Iraq Study Group report from Baker and
Hamilton, but White House aides made clear that the president was unlikely to accept
its key policy prescriptions. One month later, on January 10, 2007, Bush gave a tel-
evised speech outlining what he called a “new strategy” for Iraq. The heart of this strat-
egy consisted of a short-term increase, or “surge,” in the number of U.S. troops in
Iraq. The surge would involve an additional 21,000 combat troops, most of whom
would be deployed to Baghdad in an effort to bring the security situation there under
control. The additional troops would bring the total U.S. armed presence in Iraq to
nearly 170,000.
The president offered this explanation: “Our troops will have a well-defined mis-
sion: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local
population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of provid-
ing the security that Baghdad needs.” Bush said the extra troops were necessary to
ensure that “we’ll have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared”
of antigovernment insurgents and sectarian militias.
The first contingents of additional U.S. troops began arriving in Iraq early in Feb-
ruary 2007, but the full complement of 21,000 new troops was not in place until June.
Neither the president nor his aides would say how long this surge of extra troops would
last or when they expected to begin a gradual withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.
The new Democratic-led Congress in April 2007 sent Bush legislation setting a
timetable for such a withdrawal, but he vetoed the measure.
Following are excerpts from “The Way Forward—A New Approach,” the recom-
mendations section of the report by the Iraq Study Group, made public on Decem-
ber 6, 2006, and a speech by President George W. Bush, on January 10, 2007,
announcing his plans for a “surge” of additional U.S. troops in Iraq.534 IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS