Somalia: Ethiopians occupy Mogadishu

Somalia: Warlord back to his base in Mogadishu
SomaliNet
Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, a member of parliament and among former warlords, who returned to Mogadishu capital on Friday under the protection of Ethiopian forces, said he was very happy about the new change in Somalia and he is welcoming the ousting of Islamic Courts Union from the capital.

Mr. Qanyare, who returned to his residence in Mogadishu, told the local media that he is against the plan in which the government wants to disarm the militias without giving their rights. “The militias should see the government as their own,” he said.

“In my point of view, I do reject to say to the militia put down the weapons and leave for good, because if the militias who have nowhere to go are ordered to do that, they would damage the security. I would suggest the transitional federal government to consider that and make the militias themselves as government soldiers,” said Qanyare. “The government should place the militia instead of discharging them,”

Mr. Qanyare, once one of powerful warlords in Somalia, also welcomed the Ethiopian forces' entry into the capital without clashes.

“Ethiopian forces should be thanked for their military operation against the so-called Islamic Courts which made the country base for terrorists,” said Qanyare. “The rule of Al-Qaeda members in Somalia has ended in failure and Somalis got their freedom back,”

He confirmed that he is fully working with the government for restoring the law and order in the capital.

Mohamed Qanyare, an MP, said in a happy mood he had changed his position of being a warlord and is now ready to participate in reconstruction of Somalia.

He said since the warlords were defeated in Somalia, they put out where the terrorists are hiding in the country. “The fighting we had with the courts was successful because we showed the world the cave of extremists in horn of Africa,”

In Mogadishu, people feel that warlords are returning to their former positions with acts of retaliations against the remnant of Islamic members in the capital. Some see the returning of the warlords as negative to the peace and security in Somalia.

Somalis Split as Fighting Halts and Hint of Insurgency Looms
New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: December 30, 2006
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 29 — Anti-Ethiopia riots erupted in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Friday, while masked gunmen emerged for the first time on the streets, a day after Ethiopian-backed troops captured the city from Islamist forces.

Hundreds of Somalis flooded into bullet-pocked boulevards to hurl rocks at the Ethiopian soldiers, set tires on fire and shout anti-Ethiopian slogans.

“Get out of our country!” they yelled. “We hate you, Ethiopians!”

In northern Mogadishu, residents said men with scarves over their faces and assault rifles in their hands lurked on the street corners. Mogadishu has plenty of gunmen, of every age and every clan, but gunmen hiding their identity is something new and may be a sign of a developing insurgency.

“We’re going to turn this place into another Iraq,” said Abdullahi Hashi, a construction worker who said he was part of a new underground movement to fight the Ethiopians.

Many analysts have said that if the Ethiopian troops protecting the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia linger in the country too long and their intervention turns into a full-scale occupation, it will uncork a long and nasty guerilla war.

At the same time, it seems that many Somalis appreciate the presence of the Ethiopians for helping to bring some stability. Just a few hours after the protests, thousands of residents came out to warmly greet Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister of the transitional government and one of the leaders who called in the Ethiopian muscle.

It is unclear what is going to happen in Mogadishu. Many people are still absorbing the dramatic power shift that occurred this week, when the Islamists who once ruled much of the country quickly collapsed under Ethiopia’s overwhelming force, enabling the transitional government, which had been roundly dismissed as weak, to suddenly take control.

Islamist leaders said Friday that they were not simply giving up. While most of their troops have abandoned the cause — shedding their uniforms and shaving their beards — the Islamist leadership said it was regrouping in Kismayo, a city along Somalia’s southern coast. Not far from Kismayo is a lightly populated, heavily forested area that Western intelligence officers said has served as a terrorist hide-out for many years.

“We will not leave Somalia,” Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a top Islamist leader, told The Associated Press on Friday. “We will not run away from our enemies. We will never depart from Somalia. We will stay in our homeland.”

The Islamists uttered similar vows to fight to the death for Mogadishu, their former stronghold. But when thousands of Ethiopian fighters and troops from the transitional government reached the city’s outskirts on Wednesday, the Islamists fled and the city fell the next morning without a shot.

Ethiopian officials have justified the intervention in Somalia by saying that the Islamists were extremists who had their eyes on part of Ethiopia, and said their troops would remain on Somali soil until that threat is wiped out. The Ethiopian and transitional government troops seem to be focused on Mogadishu, but many Somalis suspect that once that city is stabilized, the bulk of the Ethiopian forces will shift to Kismayo. On Friday, Kismayo residents said Ethiopian fighter jets were circling the skies above town.

Mr. Gedi, meanwhile, is wasting little time getting to work. He announced Friday that the transitional government, one of the most promising efforts at a central government since 1991, when Somalia descended into anarchy, was imposing martial law for the next three months. He asked Mogadishu’s various clan militias to turn in their weapons or face the consequences.

“This country has been through a lot of anarchy,” Mr. Gedi said, “so to re-establish order we will have to have an iron hand.”

Last year, when Mr. Gedi set foot in the capital, he was nearly assassinated. On Friday, he was surrounded by armored trucks and Ethiopian infantrymen. Though officials in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, have said their troops should not enter downtown Mogadishu, many are camped in the former American Embassy, a decrepit building that was closed more than 15 years ago after American soldiers suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of warlords.

Mohammed Ibrahim and Yuusuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

President Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

President Gerald R. Ford, center, with Chief of Staff Donald H. Rumsfeld, left, and Rumsfeld’s assistant, Dick Cheney, on April 28, 1975.

FORD Quote 1: Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people. Whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what’s in our national interests, there comes a point where they conflict. And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.

FORD Quote 2 : I don’t think if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly, I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraqi war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.

FORD Quote 3 : I think Rumsfeld, Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction.

FORD Quote 4 : And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; A01

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford’s White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

“Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people,” Ford said, referring to Bush’s assertion that the United States has a “duty to free people.” But the former president said he was skeptical “whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what’s in our national interest.” He added: “And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.”

The Ford interview -- and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 -- took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

“He was an excellent chief of staff. First class,” Ford said. “But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious” as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell’s assertion that Cheney developed a “fever” about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. “I think that’s probably true.”

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. “I don’t think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly,” he said, “I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”

Ford had faced his own military crisis -- not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end. In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency -- in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and national security adviser and had what Ford said was “the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.”

“I think he was a super secretary of state,” Ford said, “but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend.”

In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. “Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of state and head of the NSC, I never understood,” Ford said. “Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period.” But Ford viewed Kissinger’s dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration’s ability to fully air policy debates. “They were supposed to check on one another.”

That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford’s White House chief of staff. Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, “I’m making a change at the secretary of defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this” by giving up the post of security adviser.

Kissinger was not happy. “Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this,” Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. “They’ll write that I’m being demoted by taking away half of my job.” But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger’s White House post.

Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. “I didn’t consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn’t get his advice, which I didn’t,” Ford said. “I made the decision on my own.”

Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. “Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, ‘I’m offering my resignation.’ Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. ‘Now, Henry, you’ve got the nation’s future in your hands and you can’t leave us now.’ Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.”

Ford added, “Any criticism in the press drove him crazy.” Kissinger would come in and say: “I’ve got to resign. I can’t stand this kind of unfair criticism.” Such threats were routine, Ford said. “I often thought, maybe I should say: ‘Okay, Henry. Goodbye,’ “ Ford said, laughing. “But I never got around to that.”

At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as “coy.” Then he added, Kissinger is a “wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of state. But Henry always protected his own flanks.”

Ford was also critical of his own actions during the interviews. He recalled, for example, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office, when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller from the Republican ticket. Some polls at the time showed that up to 25 percent of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.

When Rockefeller offered to be dropped from the ticket, Ford took him up on it. But he later regretted it. The decision to dump the loyal Rockefeller, he said, was “an act of cowardice on my part.”

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

“Well,” he said, “I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it.”

Christine Parthemore contributed to this report.

Protest against World War III

Long, Ideological War Ahead

I listened to the tape of this interview and he punched this line hard twice: " this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while".

Transcript Excerpt: The Post's Interview With President Bush
The Washington Post
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; 4:20 PM

Washington Post reporters Peter Baker, Michael Fletcher and Michael Abramowitz interviewed President Bush at the White House earlier today. Below is a transcript excerpt from their conversation.

President Bush: Listen, a couple of things before we get going. Obviously, I've been thinking about -- and talking to a lot of people about the way forward in Iraq and the way forward in this ideological struggle. I want to share one thought I had with you, and I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the army, the Marines. And I talked about this to [Defense] Secretary [Robert M.] Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea. I want to give him a little time to get his feet on the ground. And so I'll be addressing this after consultations with him. I just want to share that with you before we get going.

Q. You're talking about troops in Iraq, not --

No, I'm talking about overall size.-

- overall size of the army. Do you have a rough idea how much --

I'm going to wait for Secretary Gates. As I say, I'm inclined to believe it's important and necessary to do so. The reason why is, it is a accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while, and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace.

So you've not made a decision about Iraq, per se, about what to do --

I have not, Mike, I have not. And we'll spend some more time -- Secretary Gates, as he indicated, is going to head to the region at some point in time. I need to talk to him when he gets back. I've got more consultations to do with the national security team, which will be consulting with other folks. And I'm going to take my time to make sure that the policy, when it comes out, the American people will see that we are -- have got a new way forward to achieve an important objective, which is a country that can govern, sustain and defend itself.

And one thing that will be clear is that I want the American people to know that -- and the Iraqi people to know -- that we expect the Iraqi people to continue making hard choices and doing hard work necessary to succeed, and our job is to help them do so.

I'd like to come back to your first statement, because I'd like to expand a little bit. You talked about the size of the military. Colin Powell said on a Sunday show that the Army was nearly broken. Do you believe that's true? And, if so, do you feel responsible for that? Do you --

I heard -- we have been transforming our Army to make it lighter, more lethal and easier to move, and that transformation has been very important. Secondly, we have been changing our force posture around the world to reflect the threats of the 21st century, and that has been a very important reform.

I also believe that the suggestions I've heard from outside our government, plus people inside the government -- particularly, the Pentagon -- that we need to think about increasing our force structure makes sense, and I will work with Secretary Gates to do so. He's going to come back and report --

So is our army nearly broken, or not?

The people that would know best are those in the Pentagon. I haven't heard the word "broken," but I've heard the word "stressed." I know that we need to -- and my budgetary requests will reflect what a lot of people in Congress have been saying and in the Pentagon, and that is we need to reset our military. There's no question the military has been used a lot. And the fundamental question is, will Republicans and Democrats be able to work with the administration to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war, and this ideological struggle?

Article: Nothing New Here—And That's the Point

In California, 10 Friends Eschew Consumer Culture to Live Secondhand
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 18, 2006; A01

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the living room, the group gathers to share inspirational stories about the joy of finding just the right previously owned shower curtain. To the uninitiated, these people appear almost normal, at least in a San Francisco kind of way. But upon closer inspection, you see it: Nothing in this house, nothing on their bodies, none of their products -- nothing is new. Everything is used.

For these people, recycling wasn't enough. Composting wasn't a challenge anymore. No, they wanted much more of much less.

Attention holiday shoppers! These people haven't bought anything new in 352 days -- and counting. These 10 friends vowed last year not to purchase a single new thing in 2006 -- except food, the bare necessities for health and safety (toilet paper, brake fluid) and, thankfully, underwear, and maybe socks (they're still debating whether new socks are okay).

Everything else they bought secondhand. They bartered or borrowed. Recycled. Re-gifted. Reused. Where? Thrift stores and swap meets, friends and Dumpsters, and the Internet, from Craigslist to the Freecycle Network, which includes 3,843 communities and 2.8 million members giving away stuff to one another.

These people purchased old sheets this year. Tonight's vegetarian feast was cooked in a hand-me-down Crock-Pot. Christmas presents? They're making them, or -- shudders -- they don't give them.

They call their little initiative "the Compact," which they say has something to do with the Mayflower and the Pilgrim pledge to live for the greater good, save the planet, renew their souls, etc. And although these modern "Compactors" say they never intended to spark a mini-movement or appear on the "Today" show, that is exactly what has happened.

Since the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about them in February, their story of not buying has appeared on media outlets around the world -- everything from Yoga Journal to Martha Stewart's Body + Soul to the London Times. Even Oprah's producers called.

It appears they've pinched a nerve. Perhaps, the Compactors suggest, many people have the same feeling that the mall just isn't working for them anymore.

"We're just rarefied middle-class San Francisco greenies having a conversation about consumption and sustainability," says John Perry, a marketing executive with a high-tech firm, and one of the founding Compactors. "But suddenly, we decide we're not going to buy a bunch of new stuff for a year? And that's international news? Doesn't that say something?"

Their user group on Yahoo has grown to 1,800 registered members, representing SubCompact cells operating across the country (including Washington), and around the planet. So they apparently live among us, biding their time, quietly not buying, like some kind of Fifth Column of . . . Shakers.

The online Compact community ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact) spends enormous amounts of typing-time discussing things most Americans probably do not. Such as how to make soap. Or whether a mousetrap counts as a safety necessity. Or how to explain to your children that Santa Claus traffics in used toys.

"And people hate us for it? Like it drives them nuts?" This is Shawn Rosenmoss, an environmental engineer in the original San Francisco group. Some have called the Compactors un-American, anti-capitalist, eco-freak poseurs whose defiant act of not-consuming, if it caught on, would destroy the economy and our way of life.

Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters magazine, who advocates taking a 24-hour timeout of the consumer merry-go-round, has promoted Buy Nothing Day since 1992, urging citizens to resist the urge to splurge on the day after Thanksgiving, the kickoff to the holiday shopping spree.

Lasn claims that millions of people have stopped shopping on Buy Nothing Day, although he admits there is no way to know for sure. But Lasn does know that Internet discussion about the movement has grown, and so, too, the backlash -- against the backlash.

"I go on talk radio shows, and I'm amazed by the anger of some people, the Chamber of Commerce president who calls up and says, 'You're trying to ruin the economy,' " Lasn says. "I sympathize. I know you have to pay your rent, but try to take the larger view. We consume three times more than we did right after World War II. These things are connected."

"I think it upsets people because it seems like we're making a value judgment about them," says Rosenmoss, who has two children. "When we're simply trying to bring less . . . into our house."

What are the rules to this particular game? "People are really into the rules," Perry says, "as if it were a game, which it kind of is. I like that part of it. Figuring out how to do what I need to do without running out and buying something."

The rules are simple -- and flexible. The original Compactors decided they would get to vote on anything in the gray areas.

One member recalls asking permission to purchase a new toilet brush, contending that it was a health issue. Overruled. How about a new house key? Allowed. New tubes of shampoo, toothpaste, sunscreen are okay, but skin bronzer would be frowned upon.

At the potluck supper, the family dog is playing with a toy, which looks like a ball of yarn. Technically, it is new, and thus a Compact breaker. "But if she eats it," points out Rachel Kesel, a professional dog walker, "then it's food."

"We all have our little weaknesses," says Kate Boyd, a schoolteacher and set designer. Her challenge was getting used bicycle shoes, plus a used helmet and pump. Three buys through Craigslist through three sellers. "It was more of a hassle than going to the bike store," she says, but more interesting, too. "You get to meet new people."

The greatest challenge of the Compact? "The strangest things," Perry explains. For example, he cannot find used shoe polish.

Then there are modern dilemmas. Is it better to buy a battery (allowed, if recycled and rechargeable) for a cellular phone for $70 or just have the company give you a new free phone if you switch providers?

Clothes? Easy, they say. Vintage stores. Consignment shops. Or more down-market, your Goodwill, your Salvation Army. Or your own closet, likely filled with outfits.

Toys? The easiest. Perry and his partner, Rob Picciotto, a high school language teacher, have two adopted children. "I take Ben to Target sometimes and we'll play with the toys and then leave," Picciotto says. The kid seems happy.

"I broke down and bought a drill bit," Rosenmoss says. The Compactors nod their heads. "I just wanted it and I needed and I did it." The group members understand. They've had their drill-bit moments.

But not a lot of them. Asked what they bought that broke the Compact, the list was not long: some sneakers, the drill bit, a map, and for Sarah Pelmas and her newlywed husband, Matt Eddy (fellow Compactors), some energy-efficient windows for the house renovation. The 1920s house, they remind us, was purchased used. Indeed, they painted it with recycled paint.

"By being so strict with yourself, you learn to take a deep breath," Kesel says.

"You learn to do away with the impatience." Boyd says, "You see that the craving will pass."

One Compactor points out that the group's members are not really denying themselves much. Boyd says that, for example, by buying less new, "I drink way better wine now." Also allowed: services. So they could buy a massage if they wanted to. They can go to movies, theater, concerts, museums, bars, music clubs and restaurants. They can fly, drive (and buy gas), stay in hotels.

Judith Levine, author of "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping," went really cold turkey in 2004 with her husband. The couple split their time between Brooklyn and Vermont. She applauds the Compactors, but says that not buying stuff for a year is only taking it halfway. Not going to the movies and restaurants for a year -- now that's cutting back.

Amazingly, the Compactors have all decided to renew their pledge for another year. There are, naturally, things they miss, and so they've decided to give themselves one day next month when they can buy a few things they really need new.

Like? "I need a drain snake," Perry says. Is that not pitiful?

Pelmas is dying for new pillowcases. Used pillowcases, even this group agrees, are rather disgusting.

Lessons learned?

"We didn't do this to save the world. We did this to improve the quality of our own lives," Perry says. "And what we learned is that we all have a lot of more stuff than you think, and that you can get along on a lot less stuff than you can imagine."

Article: Opec to cut output in February, "…increasing spare capacity"

Opec to cut output in February
By Ed Crooks and Dino Mahtani in Abuja and Carola Hoyos in London
Published: December 14 2006 14:31 | Last updated: December 14 2006 19:59
Financial Times

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Thursday moved to reassert its power over oil prices by agreeing to cut production early next year in spite of rising concerns over tightening world crude markets.

Opec ministers meeting in Abuja agreed to cut output by 500,000 barrels a day from February 1. The move followed a 1.2m b/d cut announced in October, and sent prices higher.

Crude prices rose, with January West Texas Intermediary crude rising $1.14 to $62.53 in lunchtime New York trading. The WTI benchmark price has now risen 10 per cent in the last month.

Opec also broadened its reach by adding Angola as a member – boosting its share of world production from 40 to 43 per cent – while also calling a rare heads of state summit next year in Riyadh.

The last time Opec met in Saudi Arabia was in 1980. In its 46-year history, Opec has held only two summits of heads of state, with the most recent one in 2000 in Caracas.

Analysts saw the move as highlighting Saudi Arabia’s increasing assertiveness within the cartel, which comes as Riyadh is also stepping up its political activity in the Middle East, even at the risk of angering the US, its major western ally.

Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, said: “In addition to flexing its muscle externally, Saudi Arabia, with the heads of state meeting, wants to make sure that the group keeps working together for the long term.”

Saudi Arabia has played a pivotal role in Opec, in which it is the biggest producer. But, in the past, the kingdom has sought to keep a low profile within the cartel to avoid straining its relationship with the US and Europe.

In a statement, Opec said the cut was justified on the basis that there was “more than ample crude supply, high stocks levels and increasing spare capacity” in the market.

The cartel estimates that non-Opec oil production will rise by 1.8m b/d next year, its fastest rate since 1984, and that global economic growth will slow.

However, the cut was criticised by the International Energy Agency, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog, which had warned on the eve of Thursday’s meeting that world oil markets were tightening.

Lawrence Eagles, of the IEA said: “The announcement of further cuts is unwelcome, particularly in the light of existing high prices, elevated supply risks and the onset of the peak winter heating season.”

Opec member countries had been split coming into the Abuja meeting, with some, such as Iran calling for a cut in output, and others, such as Kuwait, suggesting one was not needed.

There was also pressure on the members to deliver the 1.2m barrel a day cut in production to 26.3m barrels a day that they agreed at the previous Opec meeting in Doha in October

The ten member countries bound by quota restrictions – Iraq is exempt – have been suspected of failing to adhere to their commitments to cut output.

The IEA estimated that Opec production actually fell by only half the 1.2m b/d target last month. Opec itself believes compliance has been better, although still short of the target.

Arriving at the meeting on Wednesday Ali Naimi, the petroleum minister of Saudi Arabia, which is Opec’s biggest and most influential member, had suggested that “a bit more work” was needed, and that view appears to have been reflected in the decision. The next ministerial meeting will not be held until the middle of March next year.

Article: General Says Army Will Need To Grow

General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 15, 2006; A01

Warning that the active-duty Army “will break” under the strain of today’s war-zone rotations, the nation’s top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation’s main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today’s Pentagon policies is “not right.”

In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war “flat-footed” with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the “hollow Army,” Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war.

“The Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the global war on terror . . . without its components -- active, Guard and reserve -- surging together,” Schoomaker said in testimony before the congressionally created Commission on the National Guard and Reserves.

The burden on the Army’s 507,000 active-duty soldiers -- who now spend more time at war than at home -- is simply too great, he said. “At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component,” he said, drawing murmurs around the hearing room.

The Army, which had 482,000 soldiers in 2001, plans to grow temporarily to 512,000. But the Army now seeks to make that increase permanent and to continue increasing its ranks by 7,000 or more a year, Schoomaker said. He said the total increase is under discussion.

“I recommend we continue to grow the Army so that we have choices,” Schoomaker said, cautioning that it is ill advised to assume demand for American troops overseas will decrease. “Our history is replete with examples where we have guessed wrong: 1941, 1950, 2001, to name a few,” he said. “We don’t know what’s ahead.”

In light of such a sober assessment, Schoomaker voiced skepticism about the idea of an infusion of U.S. ground troops into Iraq, a message sources said he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered to President Bush at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

“We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be measurable and get us something,” he told reporters after the hearing.

Schoomaker’s highly public appeal for more troops and reserve call-ups appeared to be part of an Army campaign to lobby incoming Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is to be sworn in Monday, to approve the desired policy changes as well as a significant increase in the Army budget.

The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about $1.2 billion a year, up from $700 million in 2001 in part because of increased enlistment bonuses and other incentives. The Army will have to “gain additional resources to support that strategy,” Schoomaker acknowledged.

Democrats, who will take charge of Congress next month, said yesterday that they plan to hold hearings on the “urgent” and “critical” readiness problems of the Army and Marine Corps. “Readiness levels for every unit must be raised and maintained at the highest possible level,” Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said in an opinion article released yesterday. Two-thirds of Army units in the United States are now considered not ready to deploy.

The Army’s manpower dilemma stems from current Pentagon policies: Although 55 percent of soldiers belong to the National Guard or the reserve, the Defense Department dictates that reservists can be mobilized involuntarily only once, and for no more than 24 months.

As a result, out of the total of 522,000 Army National Guard and reserve members, only about 90,000 are still available to be mobilized, according to Army data. “We’re out of Schlitz,” declared an Army chart depicting the shortage as a depleted barrel, saying this leaves “future missions in jeopardy.”

Compounding the problem, the Pentagon has restricted repeated involuntary call-ups, leading to deeper and deeper holes in Army Guard and reserve units. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized for Iraq and Afghanistan. So when a unit is called to deploy, the only soldiers who can go are volunteers and new soldiers. The remainder are often drawn from dozens of units across the United States.

The result is systematically “broken” and “non-cohesive” units, said another Army chart titled “OSD-mandated Volunteer Policy Stresses the Force,” referring to the office of the secretary of defense.

For example, Army Reserve units now must take an average of 62 percent of their soldiers for deployments from other units, compared with 6 percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 2003, according to the Army data. In one transportation company, only seven of 170 soldiers were eligible to deploy. The other 163 came from 65 other units in 49 locations, said the commission chairman, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro, who quoted a Marine Reserve officer as calling the policy “evil.”

“Military necessity dictates that we deploy organized, trained, equipped cohesive units -- and you don’t do that by pick-up teams,” said Schoomaker, a decorated veteran of the Army’s Delta Force who served in the ill-fated Desert One rescue mission in Iran in 1980.

“We must start this clock again . . . and field fully ready units. . . . We must change this policy,” he said, banging his hand on the table for emphasis. He said later that he had detected “some movement” by Pentagon policymakers who have so far rejected a change on the politically sensitive issue.

In an interview yesterday on C-SPAN, Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, said that under the current authority Bush can mobilize up to 1 million reservists for no more than two “continuous” years, but the Pentagon policy under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been more restrictive, limiting the time to two “cumulative” years. “The law does say ‘continuous,’ so you could have a break and recall them,” Hall said.

Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, chief of the 346,000-strong Army National Guard, said yesterday that his force is “poised for remobilization.”

Vaughn said he thinks state Guard leaders will accept fresh call-ups sooner than planned as long as the deployments are limited to 12 months and draw on units that have been home the longest. He said the Guard could tolerate having units deploy for one year out of every five, instead of out of every six.

“One year is absolutely critical,” he said, explaining that the 18 months it currently takes for a Guard unit to mobilize, train and deploy means too much time away from jobs and families. Schoomaker indicated that the Army is working on reducing the duration of Guard and reserve deployments to one year.

Since 2001, the Army Guard has deployed 186,000 soldiers and the Army Reserve 164,000 soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and in homeland-defense missions.

This year will be Britain’s warmest since records began in 1659

This year will be Britain’s warmest since records began, say scientists
· Surge in temperature astounds weather experts
· Man - not nature - is to blame, researchers say

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday December 14, 2006
Guardian

Britain is on course for the warmest year since records began, according to figures from the Met Office and the University of East Anglia yesterday. Temperatures logged by weather stations across England reveal 2006 to have been unusually mild, with a mean temperature of 10.84C. The record beats the previous two joint hottest years of 1999 and 1990 by 0.21C.
Temperatures in central England have been recorded since 1659, the world’s longest climate record, and they indicate the trend towards warming weather across Britain as a whole.

Experts are convinced that the warming can only be explained by rising greenhouse gases from human activity and rule out the impact of natural variations, such as the sun’s intensity. “Our climate models show we should be getting warmer and drier weather in the summer, and warmer and wetter in the winter, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” said Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia. “I cannot see how else this can be explained.”

Soaring summer temperatures and an exceptionally warm autumn were the main forces driving annual temperatures to record levels, with July being the warmest month ever recorded at 19.7C and September an exceptional 16.8C. The summer heatwave was caused by a high pressure weather system loitering over the Alps from July to August. Highs are associated with air currents that spin clockwise, so on the western side Britain was warmed by air sucked up from north Africa. The high brought chilly northerlies down to east European countries.

In July, temperatures reached 33C (91F) across an area of central and southern England from Hereford to Bedfordshire, with 29.5C recorded at Prestwick, near Glasgow, and 30C in Castlederg, Northern Ireland. The heatwave put the Department of Health on level three alert - one away from emergency levels - and elderly and vulnerable people were advised to drink lots, stay out of the sun in the afternoon and wear loose clothing.

In the autumn, predominantly south-westerly air currents brought warm air to southern Britain from Spain and Portugal.

The record year has astounded scientists. “What’s phenomenal about this year is that some of these months have broken records by incredible amounts. This year it was 0.8C warmer in autumn and 0.5C warmer between April and October than the previous warmest years. Normally these records are broken by around one tenth of a degree or so,” said Prof Jones.

A study this year by Peter Stott at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change found that warming over the past 50 years could only be explained by climbing emissions of greenhouse gases. A 1C rise in the past five decades was only reproduced by climate models when human-induced greenhouse gas emissions were included.

In 2004 Dr Stott and scientists at Oxford University showed that human emissions of greenhouse gases had more than doubled the risk of record-breaking heatwaves such as the one reckoned to have killed 27,000 people across Europe in 2003. The Met Office figures show that 2006 is set to be 1.37C warmer than the mean temperature logged over the four decades from 1961. The previous two hottest years, 1990 and 1999, both recorded mean temperatures of 10.63C.

All of the 10 warmest years in Britain have occurred in the past 18 years, except the fourth hottest, when in 1949 the year’s mean temperature reached 10.62C.

Other figures released by the Met Office yesterday reveal that global temperatures have risen too, with 2006 on track to become the sixth warmest year since records began in 1850. The latest figures mean that the 10 warmest years ever have all occurred in the past 12 years. Some scientists already predict a warmer year in 2007, in large part because of a natural phenomenon called El Niño in the eastern Pacific, which is expected to have a profound effect on climate.

Mild warming is not expected to be overly problematic for the UK, but the trend towards drier summers has already seen a two-year drought devastate groundwater supplies in southern England, while sudden downpours have triggered flash flooding. Though scientists are not able to pin a single year’s record temperatures on global warming, the long-term trend towards a warming climate is now irrefutable, they claim, and should be taken seriously by policy makers.

“The government is making many of the right noises, but we really should be doing more,” said Prof Jones. “We were the first country to industrialise, why can’t we become the first to really reduce our emissions? I despair when I hear the government talking about extensions to airports, when air travel is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases. It’s as if there’s a belief in government that this will sort itself out.”

Article: “An oil supply interruption cannot be reasonably dismissed as improbable.”

Bush urged to break US oil dependence
By Carola Hoyos in London, Edward Luce in Washington and Krishna Guha in Beijing
Published: December 13 2006 22:07
Financial Times

The Bush administration should act decisively to break America’s dependence on oil, said a group of leading US business executives and senior military officers in a report presented on Wednesday to the White House and Congress.

The bipartisan group, which includes the chief executives of Fedex, UPS, Dow Chemicals and some of America’s best known retired generals, urged Washington to recognise that “pure market economics will never solve the problem” of US oil dependency.

The report poured cold water on the Bush administration’s goal of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, rather than on oil in general. It urged Mr Bush and the new Democrat-controlled Congress to set up a plan to halve the American economy’s oil-intensity by 2030.

George W. Bush has repeatedly identified “energy independence” and immigration reform as two of the issues most likely to attract bipartisan support following the Republican loss of control of Capitol Hill in mid-term elections last month.

“Events affecting supply or demand anywhere will affect consumers everywhere,” said the report, brought out by the Energy Security Leadership Council, a think tank. “Exposure to price shocks is a function of how much oil a nation consumes and is not significantly affected by the ratio of “domestic oil” to so-called “foreign oil”.

The report also warned Mr Bush, who is expected to announce new energy independence measures in his annual State of the Union address to Congress next month, that America’s oil dependence makes it acutely vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

America’s transport system is 97 per cent dependent on oil. More than 90 per cent of world oil supply is controlled by foreign governments. “America must address this critical weakness.” Said P.X. Kelley, a retired Marine Corps general. “An oil supply interruption cannot be reasonably dismissed as improbable.”

However, there is deep-seated scepticism about the willingness of the Bush administration, which has yet to endorse the theory of global warming, to take the tough steps most energy experts say are necessary to reduce America’s dependence on oil.

Last January Mr Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil”. But Mr Bush’s announcement was not followed by any significant change in energy strategy. “There is very little reason to believe that the White House will take the tough measures necessary to make this happen,” said a Washington-based energy lobbyist. “There is no appetite, say, to impose a carbon tax or for putting a floor under the price of oil that would incentivise investors to put their money into alternative energy.”

However, the US administration wants to step up co-operation with China on energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels. Energy and the environment will be among the topics addressed in Friday’s final session of the US-China strategic economic dialogue involving top officials meeting in Beijing.

The dialogue is the brainchild of Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, who has a strong track record as an environmentalist and is treated with suspicion by some US conservatives as a result. Lack of binding targets for China and other big emerging market countries such as India to limit their greenhouse gas emissions was one of America’s principal reasons for refusing to ratify the Kyoto accord.

The Goldman Sachs Group earned $9.34 billion this year; $16.5 billion was set aside for salaries

Goldman Reports Record Earnings for 2006

$16.5 billion was set aside for salaries, bonuses and benefits, or an average of $622,000 for each employee.

Goldman Reports Record Earnings for 2006
December 12, 2006
New York Times

By JOHN HOLUSHA
The Goldman Sachs Group, the investment banking company that is the leading advisor in corporate mergers and acquisitions, reported today that it earned $9.34 billion this year, the most in Wall Street history.

The company said it was setting aside $16.5 billion for salaries, bonuses and benefits, or an average of $622,000 for each employee, although much larger payouts usually go to the bankers who arrange business deals or sell corporate stock to investors than to other kinds of employees.

In the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ended Nov. 24, profits increased 93 percent over the year before, to $3.16 billion, or $6.59 a share, exceeding the forecasts of most analysts.

The bonuses at Goldman and those expected at other Wall Street companies are expected to boost the New Y0rk area’s economy, particularly in sales of high-end residential real estate, luxury cars and other pricey goods.

“When these guys learn what their bonuses are, we are among the first people they call,” said Pamela Liebman, the chief executive of the Corcoran Group, a residential brokerage. “They call their mothers, and then their real estate brokers.”

Ms. Liebman said that investment bankers “work hard and want to live well,” and that they are usually interested in buying a luxury apartment in Manhattan or a second or third residence elsewhere.

She said her agency is already getting calls in advance of the bonus announcements this year, and that the interest is not limited to the top executives of Wall Street firms. “Even the junior guys want to spend their bonuses on residential real estate.”

Two years ago, BMW of Manhattan opened a showroom at 57 Wall Street, so that investment bankers would not have to take the time to travel uptown to its main sales and service operation at 57th Street and 11th Avenue.

At the time, Jeffrey A. Falk, the president of the dealership, said the intention was to get physically closer to potential customers.

“This is part of a strategy we have been developing over the past two years to make it more convenient for our demographic.”

Speaking today, he said there has been an increased level of what he called “pre-shopping” at the Wall Street showroom, based on anticipated bonuses.

“They are shopping now, and talking to salesmen based on what they think their bonus will be,” Mr. Falk said. “Then in January and February, we’ll get the orders.”

Spouses and the high-end retailers that cater to them feel the effect of the bonus payment, said Faith H. Consolo, vice chair of Prudential Douglas Elliman, a commercial brokerage.

“The luxury market is very dramatically affected by bonuses,” Ms. Consolo said. “We are talking furs, jewelry, apparel and beauty items like $250 jars of face cream. Anything that makes them look good or feel good.”

Luxury spas are likely to see an influx of business as well, she side, as executives use part of their bonuses to send their spouses on spa vacations.

2006 is the third consecutive year of record-breaking earnings for Goldman, which is the world’s largest securities company as measured by the total market value of its stock. And the company appears positioned to continue growing in its crucial investment banking business.

The company said its backlog of merger and underwriting deals was larger at the end of November than it was at the end of August.

Rising stock prices generally, an active market in fee-generating business deals and gains on investments, many of them in Asia, are expected to make this year exceptionally profitable for many other Wall Street companies as well.

Carbon Neutral: Travel Section

New York Times
December 10, 2006
Buzzword of the Year
Carbon Neutral: Raising the Ante on Eco-Tourism

By MICHELLE HIGGINS
SUDDENLY it’s not enough to be green. Now truly eco-conscious travelers are also carbon neutral.

The term, which will be added to the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2007, describes a balance between polluting and enhancing the environment, especially in terms of harmful greenhouse gases. Its use is perhaps nowhere more prevalent than in the travel industry, where eco-tourism has been steadily gaining momentum over the years, and travelers — who are already booking eco-friendly lodging, renting hybrid cars and reusing the towels in their hotel rooms — are looking for ways to further reduce their impact on the environment.

For travelers, becoming carbon neutral involves calculating their “carbon footprint,” the approximate amount of carbon dioxide produced on flights, road trips or when they otherwise burn fossil fuels, and then buying “offsets” — donating money for projects that promise to produce energy without burning fossil fuels or otherwise reduce the production of greenhouse gases.

The reduction purchased is supposed to equal the amount of carbon dioxide the trip created, per passenger. The ultimate goal: a carbon neutral trip.

Increasingly, tour operators are buying carbon offsets to compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide produced on trips. REI Adventures announced a Carbon-Neutral Travel program in October. Beginning next year, the company will buy renewable energy credits from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to offset the carbon dioxide produced by each traveler’s flight and ground transportation. The credits, called Green Tags, will support solar, wind and other renewable energy projects.

Ecoventura, an adventure company in the Galápagos Islands, says it has “achieved CarbonNeutral status” on its Web site, www.ecoventura.com. Working with the CarbonNeutral Company, Ecoventura is trying to balance the CO2 created through its trips by donating to a portfolio of projects, including sustainable energy projects in Sri Lanka and India, and methane recovery in the United States, which captures leaking methane at a Pennsylvania coal mine.

Ski resorts from Vail, Colo., to Stratton, Vt., are getting into the act by buying renewable energy credits to offset their electricity consumption. The credits purchased by the ski resorts support the production of clean electricity generated by wind farms or other sustainable sources rather than fossil fuels like coal and gas.

It’s a way for eco-friendly travel companies to practice what they preach. Carbon offsets “address the inherent dilemma of our programs being all about sustainability, but also having students fly around the world,” said Daniel Greenberg, executive director of Living Routes, a study-abroad company that runs sustainability education programs in eco-villages around the world and started its own carbon offset program last year.

Individual travelers can get into the mix by going to one of several carbon-offset Web sites, like www.carbonoffsets.org or www.terrapass.com, and using an online “carbon calculator” to determine the approximate amount of carbon dioxide produced when they travel. Carbon offsets, usually anywhere from $5 to $30, depending on the length of the trip and the form of transportation, can be purchased through a growing number of travel companies.

Expedia and Travelocity both rolled out new programs this year that let travelers buy carbon offsets. Travelers who buy offsets through Expedia and its partner TerraPass, a Web-based for-profit company in Menlo Park, Calif., for a medium or long-haul flight get a “Carbon Balanced Flyer” luggage tag. The charge is $5.99 to offset about 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide — the amount emitted, per passenger, on a round-trip flight of up to 2,200 miles; $16.99 for a cross-country flight of up to 6,500 miles; and $29.99 for an international flight of up to 13,000 miles.

It is unclear how much impact these programs actually have on climate change — or whether they function mostly as a way for travelers to justify the amount of pollution they generate on trips. Still, many travelers see carbon offsetting as a way to help tackle global warming without having to give up that trip to the Bahamas.

Bush Begins Round of Talks on Iraq

New York Times
December 11, 2006

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 — President Bush traveled to the State Department today as part of a round of consultations over how to reshape Iraq policy, saying that it was important that “when I do speak to the American people, they will know that I have listened to all aspects of government.”

He was scheduled to meet this afternoon with five experts in military and foreign affairs, four of whom have expressed deep skepticism about the recommendations issued last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. On Tuesday, he will consult by video link with commanders in Iraq and the U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

The president will then travel to the Pentagon on Wednesday for talks with top officials there.

Under intense pressure to change course, following his party’s losses in the Nov. 7 election and the assessment by the study group that the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating,” President Bush hopes to deliver a major speech on Iraq before Christmas, according to the White House.

In brief remarks today at the State Department, as he stood flanked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, the president gave little clue to his thinking but again underscored a long-term U.S. commitment to a successful outcome in Iraq.

Success there, he said, “is a country that governs, defends itself, that is a free society, that serves as an ally in this war on terror,” Mr. Bush said, adding that, “Iraq is a central component of defeating the extremists who want to establish safe haven in the Middle East.”

Stopping those who, he said, seek to aggressively spread a totalitarian ideology “is really the calling of our time.”

Mr. Bush has distanced himself from two key recommendations by the study group, the withdrawal from Iraq of most combat units by early 2008, and a new diplomatic effort to engage Iraq’s neighbors, including holding talks with Iran and Syria.

The president did not mention either of those issues today, though he did speak of the “responsibilities” that Iraq’s neighbors have “to help this young Iraqi democracy survive.”

And in an apparent reference to recent diplomatic initiatives by Baghdad toward the governments in Damascus and Tehran, Mr. Bush said, “I appreciate so very much the Iraqi leadership taking the lead in its neighborhood.”

The president took no questions.

Later today, Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet with Jack Keane, who was acting chief of staff for the Army and served on the study group’s panel of military advisers; Stephen Biddle, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former professor at the U.S. Army War College; Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general; Eliot Cohen, a military historian with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Strategic and Advanced International Studies; and Wayne Downing Jr., the retired former commander of the Special Operations Command and a White House counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Bush’s first term.

All but Mr. Downing are on record as having criticized parts of the study group’s report, some in particularly sharp terms.

Mr. Keane, for example, said that the goal set out by the Iraq Study Group of withdrawing most combat forces from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008 was impractical.

”Based on where we are now, we can’t get there,” Keane said in an interview last week with The New York Times. The report’s conclusions, he said, say more about ”the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”

General McCaffrey told The Times that while he agreed with the overall concept of withdrawing U.S. forces as the Iraqi military capability improved, the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades could leave thousands of American advisers dangerously exposed. ”This is a recipe for national humiliation,” he said.

Mr. Biddle offered a similar assessment. He told The Los Angeles Times that the panel’s recommendation of embedding more U.S. troops with Iraqi units could be particularly dangerous without the backing of American combat brigades nearby.

“The U.S. combat brigades are currently keeping a lid on the violence in the country,” Mr. Biddle said. Without the combat units, he predicted, the use of roadside bombs by insurgents “will skyrocket, the civilian death rate will increase.”

For his part, Mr. Cohen was dismissive of both the study group’s process and its results.

“There is something of a farce in all this, an invocation of wisdom from a cohesive Washington elite that does not exist,” he wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.

On Sunday, he told an NBC interviewer, “You had a bunch of very senior, eminent people all very worthy, who spent a grand total of four days in Iraq. Only one of them left the Green Zone.”

Of the report itself, he said: “Some parts of this verge on fantasy. You know, you’re going to get the Syrians to turn themselves in over the Hariri assassination; you’ll get them to persuade Hamas to recognize Israel.”

He referred to the assassination in February 2005 in Lebanon of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. United Nations investigations have implicated Syrian officials in the killing.

“The idea that you’re going to have a different course of action” in Iraq, Mr. Cohen said, “I don’t really buy, at the end of the day.”

The White House has said that the study group report will be only “one input” in the administration’s broad reconsideration of Iraq policy. In addition to separate State Department and Defense Department reviews, the National Security Council has also been examining policy options.

Report on Iraq Exposes Divide Within G.O.P.

New York Times
December 10, 2006

By JOHN M. BRODER and ROBIN TONER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — The release of the report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group this week exposed deep fissures among Republicans over how to manage a war that many fear will haunt their party — and the nation — for years to come.

A document that many in Washington had hoped would pave the way for a bipartisan compromise on Iraq instead drew sharp condemnation from the right, with hawks saying it was a wasted effort that advocated a shameful American retreat.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page described the report as a “strategic muddle,” Richard Perle called it “absurd,” Rush Limbaugh labeled it “stupid,” and The New York Post portrayed the leaders of the group, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic member of Congress, as “surrender monkeys.”

Republican moderates clung to the report, mindful of the drubbing the party received in last month’s midterm elections largely because of Iraq. They said they hoped President Bush would adopt the group’s principal recommendations and begin the process of disengagement from the long and costly war. But White House officials who conducted a preliminary review of the report said they had concluded that many of the proposals were impractical or unrealistic. [Page 18.]

The divisions could make it more difficult for Republicans to coalesce on national security policy and avoid a bitter intraparty fight going into the 2008 campaign.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, rejected the major recommendations of the group because they did not present a formula for victory. Mr. McCain, hoping to claim the Republican mantle on national security issues, has staked out a muscular position on Iraq, calling for an immediate increase in American forces to try to bring order to Baghdad and crush the insurgency.

It is too early to say how the war will figure in Republican primary battles, as other potential candidates are still developing their positions and conditions on the ground in Iraq may change. Mr. McCain’s chief early rival, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, has been in Asia all week and has not yet read the report, an aide said.

But the debate will go to the heart of the party’s identity — and its image as the party of strength on national security — after Mr. Bush’s aggressive post-Sept. 11 foreign policy brought electoral successes in 2002 and 2004 but was profoundly challenged by voters this year.

Mr. Bush has not yet tipped his hand on what course he intends to pursue, saying he will await parallel reviews of Iraq policy from the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon before deciding on any major changes. But he has already signaled that he intends to make some adjustments, most notably by dismissing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld immediately after the midterm elections.

Mr. Bush’s choices will not only have profound effects on the conduct of the war, but will also resonate within his party and give shape to the foreign policy debate of the 2008 elections. Republicans are already engaged in soul-searching over the results of the recent election, trying to figure out how the party can regain the faith of the American people on questions of war and peace.

The ambivalence and introspection were summed up by Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who spoke at length in the Senate this week about the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq but said he could no longer support the status quo.

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,” Mr. Smith said. “That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let’s go home.”

The frustration was widespread among Congressional Republicans, some of whom were serving their final days in office this week after an election largely influenced by the public’s unhappiness with the war.

“So what do we have?” asked Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, who supported the war, defended it throughout his re-election campaign and was defeated last month. “We have the Baker-Hamilton report, which is a prescription for surrender. It is just a matter of time.”

But Mr. Bush is also facing a rising chorus of demands from moderates in his party, as well as from Democrats, for a plan to begin a withdrawal from Iraq. They see in the report a politically palatable way to achieve disengagement from Iraq and an end to the partisan warfare in Washington.

“To ignore the message sent in the last election is to do so at our political peril, because the message was a resounding repudiation of the status quo with respect to Iraq,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the moderate Republican from Maine. “The American people are essentially unified in their intense dissatisfaction with the way things have progressed in Iraq.”

Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard and a leading advocate of the decision to invade Iraq, said: “In the real world, the Baker report is now the vehicle for those Republicans who want to extricate themselves from Iraq, while McCain is articulating the strategy for victory in Iraq. Bush will have to choose, and the Republican Party will have to choose, in the very near future between Baker and McCain.”

The choice Mr. Kristol is describing reflects a longstanding Republican schism over policy and culture between ideological neoconservatives and so-called realists. Through most of the Bush administration, the neoconservatives’ idea of using American military power to advance democracy around the world prevailed, pushed along by Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.

But as the Iraq war spiraled downward, the realists began to speak out more forcefully. They were also heavily represented on the Iraq Study Group, including Mr. Baker, former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Robert M. Gates, who stepped down from the panel last month when Mr. Bush named him to succeed Mr. Rumsfeld. All three served in the administration of Mr. Bush’s father.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, one barometer of conservative thought, called the study group’s report “a bipartisan strategic muddle ginned up for domestic political purposes.” It welcomed the panel’s plan to increase the number of American trainers embedded with Iraqi military units, but it scoffed at the group’s recommendation of involving Jordan and Syria in talks to address problems in Iraq.

Mr. Perle, a prominent neoconservative and early advocate of invading Iraq, dismissed the panel as a “misadventure” that should be ignored.

“You don’t outsource the responsibilities of the commander in chief,” Mr. Perle said. “The whole thing is absurd.”

Mr. Limbaugh, who commands a large conservative audience on talk radio, said the commission was peopled with out-of-touch weaklings who placed a higher value on bipartisan comity than on winning the war.

“You know, bipartisanship simply means Republicans cave on their core principles and agree with Democrats,” Mr. Limbaugh said on his program this week. “That’s why everybody is praising the stupid report. Because there’s nothing in this about winning, there’s nothing in this about victory. There isn’t anything in this about moving forward in a positive way. This is cut and run, surrender without the words.”

Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who is the departing chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a 2008 presidential hopeful, said, “The policy-making decisions about Iraq should not be considered to be devolving to a nonelected group put together essentially for the purpose of advising the president.”

Democrats, meanwhile, face divisions of their own, aware that they face high expectations from voters after running campaigns that promised change in Iraq.

Many leaders in the party indicated this week that they felt vindicated by the study group’s findings, and they vowed to push ahead with their promise of aggressive oversight hearings on the management of the war when they take control of Congress in January.

But the party’s liberal base is hungry for more forceful action, including voting against additional financing for the war. “It’s difficult to talk about ending the war without showing you’re willing to end the money,” said Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and leader of the antiwar caucus in the House.

Democratic leaders have opposed cutting off the money, although Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi said this week that Democrats would impose new standards and conditions in Iraq spending bills.

Representative Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican who survived a Democratic electoral sweep across New England last month, said, “I don’t think there’s a real consensus in Congress in general” on Iraq. But he added, “Having been to Iraq 15 times, staying the course would just be foolish.”

No matter what positions they take today, all Republicans would prefer that the 2008 elections not be fought on the battleground of Iraq, said Douglas Foyle, professor of government at Wesleyan University.

“They don’t want the 2008 presidential and Congressional campaign to be about staying the course,” Professor Foyle said. “That’s where the calculus of Bush and the Republicans diverge very quickly. Everyone is thinking about the next election, and Bush doesn’t have one.”

The Realists’ Repudiation Of Policies for a War, Region

The Realists’ Repudiation Of Policies for a War, Region
Washington Post
Thursday, December 7, 2006

The Iraq Study Group report released yesterday might well be titled “The Realist Manifesto.”

From the very first page, in which co-chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton scold that “our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people,” the bipartisan report is nothing less than a repudiation of the Bush administration’s diplomatic and military approach to Iraq and to the whole region.

Throughout its pages, the report reflects the foreign policy establishment’s disdain for the “neoconservative” policies long espoused by President Bush and his aides. But while many of its recommendations stem from the “realist” school of foreign policy, it is unclear at this point whether a radically different approach would make much difference nearly four years after the invasion of Iraq.

The administration’s effort to spread democracy to Arab lands is not mentioned in the report, except to note briefly that most countries in the region are wary of it. The report urges direct talks with Iran and Syria, both of which the administration has largely shunned. It also calls for placing new emphasis on resolving the Israel-Arab conflict, including pressing Israel to reach a peace deal with Syria, on the grounds that the issue shapes regional attitudes about U.S. involvement in Iraq. Overall, it strongly suggests that Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have bungled diplomacy in the region with unrealistic objectives and narrow strategies.

“ We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials, ” Hamilton told reporters, referring to the five Democrats and five Republicans who unanimously endorsed the report’s conclusions and recommendations. The bipartisan nature of the report -- and the fact that Baker was secretary of state for Bush’s father -- will make it difficult for the White House to ignore. By endorsing the critics’ view of the war, the report will also help incoming Democratic congressional leaders frame the debate over Iraq as a disaster largely of the administration’s making.

In a lengthy preamble to the recommendations titled “Assessment,” the report gives a dispassionate account of the “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq, echoing books and news reports that the administration had previously criticized as one-sided or overly negative. The report’s description of the violence in Iraq, which amounts to an attack on the administration’s understanding of the facts on the ground, will likely set the new baseline for how the Iraq conflict is portrayed.

“The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing,” the report warns.

The report is replete with damning details about the administration’s inept handling of Iraq. It notes, for instance, that only six people in the 1,000-person embassy in Baghdad can speak Arabic fluently. It recounts how the military counted 93 acts of violence in one day in July, when the group’s own reexamination of the data found 1,100 acts of violence. “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes discrepancy with policy goals,” the report says.

The report calls for seeing Iraq differently, for scaling back the administration’s goals and for ending the president’s open-ended commitments to the war-torn country. It also argues that the administration should support a “far-reaching” amnesty of insurgent fighters, pointedly warning that neither the executive nor legislative branches should try to undermine an amnesty program.

Administration officials yesterday gamely insisted that the report is not a criticism of the administration’s approach. White House spokesman Tony Snow said many issues raised in the report are being discussed and addressed by the administration. “You’re asking if that is a repudiation of policy,” he told reporters. “No, it’s an acknowledgment of reality .”

On both the diplomatic and military fronts, the report differs sharply from the administration’s current approach. Perhaps befitting a panel with two former secretaries of state -- Lawrence S. Eagleburger is also a member -- a large section of the report outlines what it labels “the New Diplomatic Offensive.”

The section appears to be an implicit rebuke of the policies pursued by Rice, arguing that her current efforts to build a regional “compact for Iraq” are too narrow, that her efforts to engage moderate Arab states lack ambition, and that her pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace needs to be reinvigorated. Bush has shunned a hands-on role in the issue, but the report says that “the United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement to solve the Arab-Israel conflict.”

“Everybody said that if you’re going to settle Iraq, it is important that you do what you can to settle Israel-Palestine,” Eagleburger said, asserting a linkage that until now the administration had rejected. The report makes no mention of the moribund U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map.

The report also urges high-level talks with Iran and Syria without preconditions, although it sets goals for those talks that struck some analysts as unrealistic. Iran and Syria might have been more amenable to serious negotiations several years ago -- the panel noted, for instance, that Iran was helpful in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban -- but that moment has probably passed, now that Iran and Syria believe the United States is on the ropes. Baker, who said “you talk to your enemies, not just your friends,” suggested that one goal of such talks would be to demonstrate to others in the region that Iran and Syria want Iraq to fail.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also comes in for some pointed commentary, with the group’s 46th recommendation being that his successor repair relations with the top military brass.

The report’s core military recommendation -- that almost all U.S. combat troops be withdrawn by the beginning of 2008, but that a large force be left to train and advise Iraqi forces -- struck some military experts as appropriate, but others called it overly ambitious.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, criticized the recommendation to quadruple the current number of U.S. advisers and trainers to about 20,000 soldiers, saying: “The U.S. is to rush in more qualified trainer and embeds that it doesn’t have and assign more existing combat forces unqualified for the mission.” Indeed, among the lessons brought home by U.S. trainers over the past three years are that many were unprepared for the task and that the mission is extremely difficult. It requires knowledge not only of U.S. combat operations but also of foreign weaponry and, most of all, of Iraqi culture.

Quang X. Pham, author of a memoir about his service in the U.S. Marine Corps and his father’s time as a pilot for the South Vietnamese military, said he considers the troop plan a thinly disguised form of quitting. “In one year, during the 2008 election year, the United States will abandon and betray Iraq as it did South Vietnam,” predicted Pham, who was a pilot during the Persian Gulf War.

Meanwhile, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), head of the “Out of Iraq” congressional caucus, said it appears to her that the group is calling only for improvements to the Bush administration’s plan to stand down U.S. forces as Iraqi forces stand up.

Iraq Study Group Press Conference

December 6, 2006
Transcript
The Iraq Study Group News Conference

Following are remarks by the Iraq Study Group in presenting its report on U.S. involvement in Iraq, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions, LLC.

Speakers: James Baker, Chairman; Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairman; William Perry, Member; Sandra Day O’Conner, Member; Ed Meese, Member; Leon Panetta, Member; Charles S. Robb, Member.

HAMILTON: Good morning. Earlier today, we presented the report of the Iraq Study Group to President Bush and to members of the United States Congress.

We are pleased to present our report now to the American people. It represents the unanimous views of our 10 members.

On behalf of the Iraq Study Group, Jim Baker and I thank Congressman Frank Wolf who took the initiative to create the study group; Senators John Warner and Joe Biden, Congressman Chris Shays and others for supporting our efforts. And, of course, we thank all of the members of the Congress on both sides of Capitol Hill, on both sides of the aisle.

I want to say a word of appreciation to Jim Baker for his extraordinary leadership. It has been a high personal privilege for me to work with him.

And, of course, I extend my thanks to all members of the Iraq Study Group, who have worked very hard and have come together to support this report.

The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. Attacks on U.S. forces and U.S. casualties continue at an alarming rate. The Iraqi people are suffering great hardship.

The democratically elected government that replaced Saddam Hussein is not adequately advancing the key issues of national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services.

Economic development is hampered.

The current approach is not working. And the ability of the United States to influence events is diminishing.

The United States has committed staggering resources. Our country has lost almost 2,900 Americans; 21,000 more have been wounded. The United States has spent an estimated $400 billion in Iraq, and costs could rise well over $1 trillion.

Many Americans are understandably dissatisfied.

Our ship of state has hit rough waters. It must now chart a new way forward.

No course of action in Iraq is guaranteed to stop a slide toward chaos. Yet, in our view, not all options have been exhausted.

We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq as set forth by President Bush: an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.

We recommend a new approach to pursue that goal. We recommend a responsible transition.
Our three most important recommendations are equally important and reinforce one another.

First, a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.

Two, prompt action by the Iraqi government to achieve milestones, particularly on national reconciliation.

And, three, a new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and in the region.
United States must encourage Iraqis to take responsibility for their own destiny. This responsible transition can allow for a reduction in the U.S. presence in Iraq over time.

The primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations.

As this transition proceeds, the United States should increase the number of troops embedded in and supporting the Iraqi army. And U.S. combat forces could begin to move out of Iraq.

By the first quarter of 2008, subject, of course, to unexpected developments on the ground, all U.S. combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid reaction and special operation teams, and in training, equipping, advising and force protection.

A key mission for those rapid reaction and special forces would be targeting Al Qaida in Iraq.
It is clear that the Iraqi government will need assistance from the United States for some time to come. Yet the United States must make it clear to the Iraqi government that we could carry out our plans, including planned redeployments, even if the Iraqi government did not implement their planned changes.

The United States must not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of troops deployed in Iraq.

We also make several recommendations to reset the U.S. military, as these redeployments go forward.

A military solution alone will not end the violence in Iraq. We must help the Iraqis help themselves.

President Bush and his national security team should convey a clear message to Iraqi leaders: The United States will support them if they take prompt action to make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security and improving the daily lives of Iraqis.

If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones, the United States then should reduce its political, military or economic support to the Iraqi government.
Let me now turn over the floor to Secretary Baker.

BAKER: Thank you very much, Lee.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you, Lee Hamilton, for your hard work, and I might add, your distinguished service to our nation in the past.

And thanks, as well, to all of our colleagues on the Iraqi Study Group who’ve worked on this difficult issue and they worked on it in a bipartisan spirit and in a very collaborative way.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no magic formula that will solve the problems of Iraq.

But to give the Iraqi government a chance to succeed, United States policy must be focused more broadly than on military strategy alone or on Iraq alone. It must seek the active and constructive engagement of all governments that have an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, including all of Iran’s neighbors -- Iraq’s neighbors.

To gain this constructive engagement, the United States should promptly initiate a new diplomatic offensive, and working with the government of Iraq should create an international Iraq support group to address comprehensively the political, economic and military matters necessary to provide stability in Iraq.

That support group should include Iraq, of course, but also all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, the key regional states, including Egypt and the Gulf states, the United Nations Security Council Perm 5 member countries, a representative of the United Nations secretary general, and the European Union.

Given the central importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict to many countries both in and out of the region, the United States must again initiate active negotiations to achieve a stable Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts and in the manner that we outline specifically in the report.

Ladies and gentlemen, altogether in this report we make 79 recommendations. In addition to military, political and diplomatic recommendations, which, as Lee has said, are equally important and reinforce each other, these recommendations cover a range of other areas: criminal justice, oil, reconstruction, the United States budget process, the training of U.S. government personnel, and United States intelligence.

These recommendations are important and they will greatly increase our ability to achieve a responsible transition in Iraq.

We agreed upon our recommendations after considering a full range of other approaches. I suppose some of you will have questions about some of those other approaches, so let me say a word or two about them.

We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution. In our opinion, that approach is no longer viable.

While we do recommend a five-fold increase in U.S. forces training Iraqi troops, from let’s say from a high of 4,000 to a high of 20,000, we do not recommend increasing U.S. forces by in excess of 100,000 troops, as some have suggested.

Additional fully combat-ready United States forces of that magnitude are simply not available.
We have not recommended a division of Iraq into three autonomous regions based on ethnic or sectarian identities but with a weak central government.

As a practical matter, such a devolution, in our view, could not be managed on an orderly basis. And because Iraq’s major cities are peopled by a mixture of warring groups, a disorderly devolution would likely result in a humanitarian disaster or a broad-based civil war.
We also did not recommend a precipitous withdrawal of troops because that might not only cause a blood bath, it would also invite a wider regional war.

The approach we do recommend as its own shortcomings. We recognize that implementing it will require a tremendous amount of political will and will require a unity of effort by government agencies.

Most of all, it will require cooperation by the executive and the legislative branches of our government.

Events in Iraq could overtake what we recommend. And for that reason, we believe that decisions should be made by our national leaders with some urgency.

As it is now, people are being killed day after day: Iraqis and the brave American troops who are trying to help them.

Struggling in a world of fear, the Iraqis themselves dare not dream. They have been liberated from the nightmare of a tyrannical order only to face the nightmare of brutal violence.
As a matter of humanitarian concern, as a matter of national interest and as a matter of practical necessity, it is time to find a new way forward, a new approach.

We believe that a constructive solution requires that a new political consensus be built, a new consensus here at home and a new consensus abroad And it is in that spirit that we have approached our study group’s task on a bipartisan basis.

So I’m especially pleased to note for you that our group offers and supports each and every one of our recommendations unanimously. We, of course, recognize that some people will differ with some of these recommendations.

We nevertheless hope very much that in moving forward others will wish to continue to broaden and deepen the bipartisan spirit that has helped us come together.

We’d be delighted to respond to your questions.

QUESTION: You talked about no course of action guaranteeing to stop the slide. But what do you think the odds are, if every single one of your recommendations is implemented, that this situation in Iraq can be turned around?

And secondly, you talked about urgency. Your process took nine months. Was there ever any concern that, with the situation sliding so rapidly, that your own report might be too late?

BAKER: Well, I’ll take the last part of that, and then maybe we’ll both answer the first part.
There was never any concern on the part of our group. We felt it was extraordinarily important to try and keep this process out of politics if we could. And therefore we did not want to bring it out during the political season, during the midterm election.

So we decided right off the bat that we wanted to wait until after the election. We did so. We only took one month to get the report out after the election was concluded.

With respect to the chances for success, I don’t know whether anybody has a crystal ball that could put a percentage on there for you. I’ll tell you this, and we say this in our report: If we do what we recommend in this report, it will certainly improve our chances for success.

HAMILTON: We cannot, of course, predict the future.

We believe that the situation in Iraq today is very, very serious. We do not know if it can be turned around. But we think we have an obligation to try. And if the recommendations that we have made are effectively implemented, there is at least a chance that you can see established a stable government in Iraq and stability in the region.

The task ahead of us is daunting -- very, very difficult. And we recognize that. But it is not by any means lost.

QUESTION: Just to follow up on that, can the president pick and choose what recommendations he decides to implement, or is this approach, as far as you’re concerned, an all-or-nothing approach if it is intended to work?

BAKER: Well, this is not legislation, and it’s not an executive order. And it doesn’t bind anyone: doesn’t bind the leadership on the Hill, and it doesn’t bind the president.

But it is the only recommended approach that will enjoy, in our opinion, complete bipartisan support, at least from the 10 people that you see up here.

HAMILTON: I think it’s very important to emphasize, as your question suggests, that in order to solve the difficulties in Iraq you do have to have a comprehensive approach. And we tried to put together a comprehensive approach with these 79 recommendations.

Now, we’re not the only group in town making recommendations here.

But you cannot solve this problem by dealing with the military problem or by dealing with the economic reconstruction problem or by dealing with the political problems in Iraq. It’s too far along the way for that.

So a comprehensive approach has to be taken.

We were immensely pleased today when President Bush indicated to us that this report presents to the American people a common opportunity to deal with the problems in Iraq. And if that kind of attitude prevails, then you will see a bipartisan solution that we put together in the country.

And I think it’s a matter of faith for all of us up here that American foreign policy is going to be much stronger if we’re united -- executive and legislative but, also, the American people are supporting the foreign policy.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, Congressman Hamilton, commissioners, gentlemen, Madam Supreme Court Justice, I’ve only had a chance to briefly read this, but I searched in vain for a phrase or a word the president uses routinely: victory.

And I’m wondering if it is fair to say that the conclusion of the Iraq Study Group is that victory is so difficult to define right now, the more important and more immediate policy objective of the United States government and the Iraqi government is to avoid catastrophe in Iraq.

And if that is, in fact, what the Iraq Study Group is saying, isn’t that going to be part of an elaborate communication process with the American people to rally around avoiding catastrophe, as opposed to rallying around definable victory?

BAKER: We stayed away from a lot of terms that have been bandied about during the campaign season and the political debate. You probably won’t find civil war in here either. You won’t find victory. But you will find success.

And so I think what our report says on balance, if you read it, is that if you implement the recommendations we make, the chances for success in Iraq will be improved.

QUESTION: You’re certainly a group of distinguished elder statesmen, but tell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said, given that -- as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb; none of you made it out of the Green Zone -- why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he’s hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?

HAMILTON: The members of the Iraq Study Group are, I think, public servants of a distinguished record. We don’t pretend now, we did not pretend at the start, to have expertise. We’ve put in a very intensive period of time. We have some judgments about the way this country works and the way our government works, and some considerable experience within our group on the Middle East.

We recognize that our report is only one, and there will be many recommendations. But the report will stand on its own and be accepted or rejected on its own.

We tried to set forth here achievable goals. It’s a very easy thing to look at Iraq and sit down and set out a number of goals that really have no chance of all of being implemented. We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials.

We also hope that our report will help bridge the divide in this country on the Iraq war and will at least be a beginning of a consensus here. Because without that consensus in the country, we do not think ultimately you can succeed in Iraq.

BAKER: Let me add to that that this report by this bunch of has- beens up here is the only bipartisan report that’s out there.

QUESTION: One of the aspects of your report is outreach to Iran and Syria. What indications do you have from the discussions that you had in preparing the report that these two countries are prepared to be at all helpful?

And I notice that you’ve taken the nuclear issue out of the equation. You say that should not be discussed in connection with Iraq. Why would the Iranians agree to come to a table and talk about Iraq unless the nuclear question and other questions were addressed?

BAKER: Why did they agree to come to the table and talk about Afghanistan without talking about the nuclear issue? They did, and they helped us, and it was important.

In our discussions with them -- and the report points this out -- we didn’t get the feeling that Iran is champing at the bit to come to the table with us to talk about Iraq. And in fact, we say we think they very well might not.

But we also say we ought to put it to them, though, so that the world will see the rejectionist attitude that they are projecting by that action.

With respect to Syria, there’s some strong indications that they would be in a position, if we were able to enter into a constructive dialogue with them, that they would be in a position to help us and might want to help us.

But we’re specific in the report, there must be 10 or 11 or 12 things we say there that we will be asking of Syria. The suggestion that somehow we’re going to sacrifice the investigations of Pierre Gemayel and the assassinations of Gemayel and Hariri or others is just ridiculous.
So we’re talking not about talking to be talking. We’re talking about tough diplomacy.

HAMILTON: May I simply add to that that I think all of us feel here that both Iran and Syria have a lot of influence in the region and have a lot of impact on Iraq?

Iran probably today is the national power that has the single greatest influence inside Iraq today.

We will be criticized, I’m sure, for talking with our adversaries. But I do not see how you solve these problems without talking to them.

We have no exaggerated expectations of what can happen. We recognize that it’s not likely to happen quickly.

On the other hand, if you don’t talk to them, we don’t see much likelihood of progress being made.

You cannot look at this area of the world and pick and choose among the countries that you’re going to deal with. Everything in the Middle East is connected to everything else. And this diplomatic initiative that we have put forward recognizes that.

BAKER: And let me just add to that, if I might, that for 40 years, we talked to the Soviet Union, during a time when they were committed to wiping us off the face of the Earth.

So you talk to your enemies, not just your friends.

QUESTION: As clearly as you can, can you talk about this notion of significantly increasing the number of U.S. troops embedded with Iraqis? Does that imply a top line increase to the 139,000 troops in Iraq right now or simply shifting a greater proportion of those in Iraq to embedded units?

BAKER: Secretary Perry will answer that.

PERRY: We’re talking about an increase from about 3,000 or 4,000 we now have to maybe 15,000 to 20,000. So there’s about an extra 10,000 troops we’re talking about. Those can come out of the combat brigades that we now have there if the commanders in place determine that’s the best way to do it.

There is the training time involved, so there’ll be some lag time. But it can be done, I believe, with the existing combat brigade troops.

Part of this plan involves pulling the combat brigade -- redeploying the combat brigade to the United States. As they redeploy, some of the troops can be held back for doing this mission.

QUESTION: You write that by the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. What does that mean for who’s left in Iraq -- what residual force there will be for the training mission? And to the degree foreseeable, how long do you anticipate that training mission lasting?

MEESE: It would indicate that there would be a considerable force there, which would include logistical support, it would include, obviously, the trainers themselves, force protection. We don’t say in terms of numbers specifically, but it would be adequate to take care of those responsibilities.

It will take longer for the Iraqi army to develop its own logistical and support capabilities in addition to intelligence, communications, transport, things such as that.

So it means that, over a sustained period of time, we will be backing up those trainers, particularly with ready response forces and special forces; the latter being also devoted to dealing with Al Qaida in Iraq and other terrorist groups.

QUESTION: You said, Urgent action is needed because events could overtake what we recommend. Could you be more specific about what those events are, and might they make your report ultimately moot?

HAMILTON: Well, from the very beginning we recognized that events could overtake our work, could overtake policy -- American policy in the region. And that may still be the case: We could look at your reports tomorrow and find out that it has happened.

I think the recommendations that we make here would apply to any government of Iraq, not just the one in power today.

But what are the events? Well, the events are just anarchy, total chaos, the collapse of the government without a new government taking its place, and rampant violence throughout the country.

We do not underestimate the difficulties of the problems in Iraq, and we do not underestimate the possibilities that could happen.

We’ve got a specific situation in front of us now. We have to try to deal with it the best we can. And that’s what our report is aimed for.

QUESTION: You say in the executive summary that you recommend the renewed diplomatic effort, and you talk about incentives and disincentives to Iran and Syria, and especially on the Arab-Israeli front.

Yet the Bush administration has said that it’s offered Syria and Iran in different contexts incentives and disincentives. And it also says that it is actively engaged on the Palestinian-Israeli front.
What particularly are you recommending?

BAKER: Well, it’s pretty specific. If you go to the report itself and read beyond the executive summary, we’re quite specific in what we recommend vis-a-vis the Syria-Lebanon track. We’re also specific about what we recommend on the Israel-Palestinian track.

So I refer you to the report. I could answer it, but I think we’d be wasting the time of others. You can read it in the report.

QUESTION: All of you have considerable experience at helping presidents change course when they find themselves in a blind alley. What do you intend to do from now on to help President Bush embrace the wisdom of all of your recommendations?

He’s already expressed some discomfort with several of them, including engaging Syria and Iran, and including giving the Iraqi government what might look like ultimata for changing its performance with the negative outcome of a troop disengagement if they don’t comply.

How will you act from now on to get him closer to where you are?

BAKER: I think it would be appropriate for President Clinton’s former chief of staff to answer that question.

(LAUGHTER)

PANETTA: As I told the president this morning, this war has badly divided this country.
It’s divided Republicans from Democrats, and to some extent, the president from the people. And policy sometimes, with those divisions, has been reduced to a 30-second sound bite that runs the gamut from victory or stay the course to cut and run.

And what this group tried to do, five Democrats and five Republicans, is try to set aside those code words and those divisions and try to look at the realities that are there.

And I would suggest to the president and to the American people that, if you look at the realities of what’s taking place there, the fact that violence is out of control, the fact that Iraqis ultimately have to control their future; they have to take care of security; they’ve got to deal with the region in that area, that ultimately, you can find consensus here.

This country cannot be at war and be as divided as we are today. You’ve got to unify this country.

And I’d suggest to the president that what we did in this group can perhaps serve as an example to try to pull together the leadership of the Congress and try to focus on the recommendations that we’ve made.

We have made a terrible commitment in Iraq in terms of our blood and our treasure. And I think we owe it to them to try to take one last chance at making Iraq work, and more importantly, to take one last chance at unifying this country on this war.

I think the president understands that he simply is not going to be able to proceed with whatever policy changes he wants to implement if we’re divided. That is the principal goal, in my mind, that he has to accomplish.

BAKER: Justice O’Connor?

O’CONNOR: I would be willing to add a comment about what Leon Panetta has just expressed so well.

We’ve said in the report that we agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.

And to do that, we’ve made these various recommendations on a consensus basis.

It’s my belief that if a large segment of our country gets behind that on a consensus basis that it’s very likely we can move forward and make some progress toward that statement of goals.
And this is not an ongoing commission. It really is out of our hands, having done what we did. It’s up to you, frankly. You are the people who speak to the American people. You’re there interpreting this and talking to America. And I hope that the American people will feel that if they are behind something in broad terms that we’ll be better off.

I think we will, and I hope in general others think so, too.

BAKER: Senator Simpson?

SIMPSON: Well, you better listen to the associate justice there, because when I was working on this, word for word, she said I was using split infinitives.
(LAUGHTER)
And I told her I didn’t even know what they were; I had trouble with adverbs and things like that.

But I can tell you this: Since leaving public life and this chamber, where I was the toast of the town one day and toast the next, it’s a strange place.
(LAUGHTER)
But I see the American people -- and the sadness to me is the American people see the Congress and the administration as dysfunctional, which is very sad for someone who loves the institution.

This group -- and you heard Leon speak -- it’s so clear. Leon and I used to work together. He was at the White House. I was chair; I was assistant leader. We’d meet together, have lunch, say, I’ve got a bill here. What are you going to do with it when it gets there?

Said, Well, we’re not going to keep this piece in there. That’s history. We’ll take that, we’ll take that, then we’ll approve it. We work that way.

And the sad part to me is that you see people in this who are 100-percenters in America. A 100-percenter is a person you don’t want to be around. They have gas, ulcers, heartburn and B.O.
(LAUGHTER)
And they seethe. They’re not seekers...
(LAUGHTER)
... they’re not seekers; they’re seethers. There are a lot of them out there. And we’re going to get it from the right, far right; we’re going to get it from the far left. We’re going to get bombs away and everybody’ll say it can’t work.

Well, we’re just sincere enough to believe that it will and that all people would with a D behind their name did not become a guard at Lenin’s tomb and all the people with an R behind their name did not crawl out of a cave in the mountains, and that maybe we can do something.

And that’s what we’re here for -- people of goodwill, in good faith -- maybe it’s corny, maybe it won’t work, but it sure as hell better than sitting there where we are right now.

HAMILTON: General Meese?

MEESE: One of the toughest parts of this, of course, is the governance and reconciliation parts of this on the part of the government of Iraq. And I think one of the things is the commitments they’ve already made to a series of milestones, which are incorporated in our report, to deal with some of the governance and reconciliation issues. And so that there is some commitment already on their part to resolving some of these difficult issues.

HAMILTON: The question was what we will be doing. We are not a statutorily based commission. We will go out of existence. Specifically what we do -- I think some of us, at least, will be testifying. I think we have 15 or 20 invitations to testify in both this Congress and the one in January.

So we will be interested -- in our recommendations -- we will do what we can to put them forward. But, obviously, the policymakers have to take over from this point.

QUESTION: You picked very carefully the goals of the presidents that you choose to embrace. It’s actually one of his later iterations of this, an Iraq that can defend itself, sustain itself, and govern itself.

There’s no place I saw in the executive summary where you refer to his older goals, which was a democratic Iraq or an Iraq that could spread democracy throughout the region.

Are you essentially telling the president, in this case, that he should abandon that as an either medium-term or long-range goal?

HAMILTON: We want to stay current.
(LAUGHTER)
BAKER: This was the latest of elaboration of the goal, and that’s the one we’re working with.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Of all the distinguished men and women in front of us today, you have the closest relationship with the Bush family.

When you recommend something like engaging Iran, which the president has been a very clear will only happen after they verifiably suspend, it seems to set up the need for the president to pull a 180.

Does he have the capacity to do that, in your opinion, sir?

QUESTION: You know, I’ve worked for four presidents and I used to get questions all the time: tell me about this president versus that president or the other president. And I never put presidents I worked for on the couch.

So I’m not going to answer that, because that would mean I’d have to psychologically analyze the inner workings of his mind. And I don’t do that.

QUESTION: Time and again, as we sit in rooms like this, and as early as yesterday we’ve heard members ask, various members of the administration and in the military, ask them, it’s been going four years now, and training’s been going on for four years, and something is not working.

I wonder if you could answer that question why to now training does not seem to be working with Iraq forces. And what’s the expectation that it will somehow improve? Is that just by increasing the numbers of troops embedded with Iraqi forces?

BAKER: Well, Secretary Perry can talk to you about why the training mission has not worked as well as had been hoped in the past, and then maybe General Meese would have something to say.

And we’ll take one more question after this.

PERRY: First of all, the training was slow to get started. It’s been going on I think very effectively in the last year or so. But the training is a basic training, and as the Iraqi soldiers go into their units, they don’t have any combat skill, they don’t have leadership.

So we believe that the best -- the thing that they needed at this stage to be able to come up to the task they have is effectively on- the-job training. And that on-the-job training can be best done when they have role models of American teams in front of them.

So the key to doing what this, we thought, was to substantially increase the number of American military teams embedded in Iraqi units, right down to the company level. This, I think, can make a big difference in effectiveness.

BAKER: Which is something that hasn’t been tried before, down to the company level.
General Meese?

MEESE: We have talked also in the report about increasing the amount of training that the trainers themselves receive and special selection of trainers from units both overseas and in the United States, so that we get career-enhancing assignments for military trainers to be in these particular positions.

BAKER: Senator Robb?

ROBB: Let me just say that this represents a dramatic change in the way we have been doing business. It is one that the senior military leadership of this country are supportive of, believe can be very helpful. But it represents a clear break from the past tradition of being the principal combat unit to a role of combat support.

But by embedding our forces at greater levels in the Iraqi military, we will have more capacity, more trust, more capability in the Iraqi forces.

But it will have the U.S. technical skills, all of the other support missions as well as the outside support. And it will provide a more robust capability with an Iraqi face on it.

This will diminish the American face that’s currently so much associated with our presence, give it an Iraqi face, but give them the capability on which they still depend on the United States of America to fulfill our missions.

BAKER: One final question.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) one last chance to make this work. We’ve been told over and over again that the war in Iraq is critical to our national security (OFF-MIKE). We’re also told that much of it is out of our hands, including the Iraqi government.

What if it doesn’t work? What then? Is this a war that we can afford to lose?

HAMILTON: Well, we understand the possibilities that things fall apart. That’s not where we are now.

And we have addressed our recommendations to where we are and with recommendations we hope are achievable in the context of the political environment, both in this country and in Iraq as well.

Now, if those circumstances change radically, if things fall apart, whatever that may mean, then we’ll simply have to make adjustments to it. But we are not there yet.

BAKER: Also, I might point out that in the report, we call for -- we note the fact that there will be, for quite some time, a robust American force presence, both in Iraq and in the region, because of our interest in preventing just such a result and also because of our national security interests in the region.

Thank you all very, very much.