Iraq panel co-chairmen face uphill task

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - One is a Bush family loyalist who served four presidents and guided George W. Bush to legal victory in the disputed 2000 election. The other is a resolute Democrat, a 34-year congressman who steered a divided 9/11 commission to unanimity.

Former GOP Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., are known as two of Washington's age-old fixers -- wise men who can rise above the fray in critical moments of history.

As co-chairmen of a 10-member bipartisan panel on Iraq, Baker, 76, and Hamilton, 75, face a Herculean task of extricating the U.S. from an increasingly unpopular war. Preliminary details of their unanimous report, which calls for a gradual troop pullback without setting firm timetables and more regional diplomacy, are already generating fire from some Democrats in Congress, while President Bush is deriding the notion of a graceful exit as having "no realism to it whatsoever."

Ultimately, it may be the co-chairmen's diplomatic powers and cache of bipartisan goodwill that bring disgruntled players together over a conflict that has killed more than 2,880 Americans and many more Iraqis, cost taxpayers more than $300 billion and left Iraq near civil war.

Their long-awaited 100-page report will be released Wednesday.

"Americans are waiting for them to come down from Mt. Sinai bearing tablets of the law," said Steven Simon, an expert on Middle East relations at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But it's not so much what they bring to the table. It's more about who they are.

"They may serve as a kind of deus ex machina that provides a path to a resolution," he said.

The co-chairs have no illusions about their mission.

"This war has split the American people very badly," Hamilton typically says in interviews. "What has to happen here, no matter what you do, is a lot of things have to go right. And I don't know if a lot of things can go right."

"We're not going to wring our hands over the past," adds Baker, a longtime friend and tennis partner of the first President Bush who has criticized the current president's military strategy. "We're here, what do we do now?"

The Iraq Study Group, whose formation was spurred last year by Rep. Frank Wolf (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., began with little notice in March. Wolf said the goal was to provide a "fresh look" at U.S. policies in Iraq.

The members include five Republicans and five Democrats -- Baker, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and former Sen. Alan Simpson; and Hamilton, former Clinton aide Leon Panetta, lobbyist Vernon Jordan, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Sen. Charles Robb of Virginia.

In the beginning, some Republicans hoped the group's cache could foster support for Bush's "stay the course" strategy.

Now, with voters restive over growing sectarian violence and rising U.S. casualties, both parties are looking to the commission for political cover as a wide-open 2008 presidential race begins.

Enter Baker, a Houston lawyer who started a life in politics 36 years ago to run the unsuccessful Senate campaign of the elder George Bush.

Baker is no stranger to foreign affairs: as a former secretary of State under the elder Bush, he presided over the end of the Cold War and organized the U.S., European and Arab coalition that supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the 1990-91 Gulf War.

He also served in three administrations as undersecretary of Commerce (Ford), secretaries of Treasury (Reagan) and State (the elder Bush) as well as White House chief of staff (Reagan and the elder Bush). He then delivered the White House to the younger Bush in the disputed 2000 election.

Baker's influence with the younger Bush is murky. Baker argued against ousting Saddam Hussein in 1991 and isn't shy about saying the current administration made "costly mistakes" in the Mideast. Bush, meanwhile, has made clear the White House will conduct its own crash policy review on Iraq.

Still, friends say Baker's loyal service remains an undeniable asset.

"Jim is someone who is affable and fun, but very focused when the time comes," said former Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, a fellow Texan who is a close friend of Baker and the Bush family. He described Baker as a "Mr. Reliable" who time and again got the job done under extraordinary pressure.

"In my view, there isn't any magic bullet here. But if anyone can find one, he can," said Mosbacher, 79.

It is spring 2004, and Hamilton, a bespectacled man with a 50s-style crew cut, is helping lead a meeting of the Sept. 11 commission. That day, members are in a heated discussion about particularly contentious topics: Iraq and a former counterterror chief's charge that the Bush administration ignored the al-Qaida threat.

Tempers flare, and members threaten to leave. But Hamilton, the panel's vice chairman, stands up, regaling the group with stories of his early days in Congress when bipartisanship was king. Soon enough, the members calm down and are back to work.

"When you go into a discussion, he is always prepared, always has his own opinion but is always looking for the middle ground," said former Republican New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 panel. "It is very very difficult to reach consensus. But with Lee, it was always a pleasure."

Hamilton has plenty of experience to draw on. First elected in 1965, he later became chairman of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees. He quickly established a reputation for independence, breaking with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 to sponsor the first amendments to scale back the U.S. presence in Vietnam.

He also co-chaired the committee that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal and was influential in bipartisan talks between the White House and Congress on issues such as the U.S. deployment in Lebanon.

Bernard Aronson, who as former assistant secretary of state served under Baker and worked with Hamilton in Congress, said the two co-chairmen share a common bond of pragmatism. While that approach might balance competing political interests, it risks pleasing no one.

"There are no good choices, given where we are," Aronson said. "They're trying to reach some consensus to avoid a disaster, a debacle. But the danger with that is they will be criticized from both the left and right."

___

On the Net:

AP interactive link: http://wdcmm.ap.org/interactives/bak...ton/index.html

Iraq Study Group: Iraq Study Group: United States Institute of Peace