Iraq panel chairmen to face Senate today

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

WASHINGTON - The co-chairmen of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., are taking their 96-page report before a Senate committee Thursday to face questions on their assessment of conditions inside Iraq as well as their recipe for stabilizing the country and beginning the withdrawal of American forces.

Praised by some and panned by others, the report of a high-level commission on ways to wind down the war in Iraq offered no startlingly new ideas but said a U.S. defeat still could be averted.

Describing the situation as "grave and deteriorating," the panel said Wednesday the Bush administration's approach was not working. It called for new diplomatic efforts in Iraq and the region, and recommended that the U.S. military accelerate a change in its main mission so that most combat troops can be withdrawn by spring 2008.

At the forefront are these unknowns:

_Will President Bush embrace and successfully implement the commission's main recommendations?

_Can the Iraqis do their part, starting with taking more responsibility for their security, disarming the militias and reconciling the sectarian rivals?

_Is it already too late to turn this around?

In its initial reaction the White House was noncommittal.

"We are certainly going to study it with great care," White House spokesman Tony Snow said on the same day that Robert Gates won Senate confirmation as the next secretary of defense, replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Gates had been a member of the commission until Bush announced his nomination for the
Pentagon post on Nov. 8, and he told the
Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that it was during his time on the commission that he came to the conclusion — different than Bush's — that the U.S. was not winning in Iraq.

Read more on the Iraq report at Yahoo News.