WP: Former Secretary of State Baker Leads Attempt to Salvage Iraq

Called From Diplomatic Reserve
Former Secretary of State Leads Attempt to Salvage Iraq Mission
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; Page A23

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, left, talks with former secretary of state James A. Baker III in August during a visit of the Iraq Study Group. The panel is seen as a glimmer of hope for U.S. Iraq policy. (By Daniel Berehulak -- Getty Images)

Is Jim Baker bailing out the Bushes once again?

The former secretary of state, James A. Baker III, a confidant of President George H.W. Bush, visited Baghdad two weeks ago to take a look at the vexing political and military situation. He was there as co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, put together by top think tanks at the behest of Congress to come up with ideas about the way forward in Iraq.

The group has attracted little attention beyond foreign policy elites since its formation this year. But it is widely viewed within that small world as perhaps the last hope for a midcourse correction in a venture they generally agree has been a disaster.

The reason, by and large, is the involvement of Baker, 76, the legendary troubleshooter who remains close to the first President Bush and cordial with the second. Many policy experts think that if anyone can forge bipartisan consensus on a plan for extricating the United States from Iraq -- and then successfully pitch that plan to a president who has so far seemed impervious to outside pressure -- it is the man who put together the first Gulf War coalition, which evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who came up with the idea for the study group and pushed for its formation, said he thinks the administration is "waiting anxiously" for the group's recommendations. He cited the "impeccable credentials" of the 10-member group, which also includes former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, investment banker and Bill Clinton adviser Vernon E. Jordan Jr., and former White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta. The other co-chairman is the Democratic former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton, who also co-chaired the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks....

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Some are skeptical that the president will be open to advice seeming to come from one of his father's top advisers....The administration's more hawkish supporters, meanwhile, are nervous about Baker's involvement, counting him as one of the "realist" foreign policy proponents they see as having allowed threats against the United States to grow in the '80s and '90s....

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