Withdraw U.S. troops quickly and court chaos, the White House warns. Send more troops to secure Baghdad and strain a U.S. military that's already stretched thin, the Pentagon says. Appeal to Iran for help and hear demands that Washington in turn ease its objections to Tehran's nuclear program, diplomats predict. Divide Iraq into autonomous regions and give al-Qaeda terrorists a safe haven in Sunni territory, the administration says.
The war has become a Rubik's Cube: Move to fix one side of the puzzle and another side is upended.
As Baker's Iraq Study Group prepares to release its recommendations next Wednesday, pressure is mounting at the White House and on Capitol Hill to find new approaches and even reconsider those that have been rejected before.
A majority of voters surveyed as they left polling places in this month's elections want some or all U.S. troops withdrawn now. Democrats, who take over Congress in January, are about to have responsibility to do more than criticize.
The task ahead is defined not only by military, diplomatic and political quandaries in Iraq but also by brewing civil wars in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, says a key ally, King Abdullah II of Jordan. And the United States' ability to control events "to hold Iraq together, avoid a full-scale bloodbath and shape developments in the region" has diminished.
"U.S. influence in the Middle East is ebbing, largely as a result of the consequences of our decision to invade Iraq," says Richard Haass, who served as a foreign-policy adviser to President Bush and his father. "The U.S. will still have influence but will have to share it as never before with a motley crew of local forces ranging from Iran to Hamas and Hezbollah."
The Baker commission could provide bipartisan cover to take difficult steps, says Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. "I think the president will have to listen," he says.
"We'll see their report and their ideas in due course and take a good, solid look at them," says Sean McCormack of the State Department.
The five Democrats and five Republicans on the commission finished their meetings on Wednesday. "We reached a consensus," Co-chairman Lee Hamilton told the liberal Center for American Progress late in the day.
Two top advisers to the panel, speaking on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss its deliberations, say the group ruled out three strategies: Partition Iraq. Withdraw immediately. And stay the course.
The New York Times reported in its online edition Wednesday that the study group's final report will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal. The Times said the report will also recommend the United States use diplomacy with Iran and Syria to help stop violence in Iraq.
The Times based its reporting on members of the group who spoke on condition of anonymity. USA TODAY was not able to independently confirm the details of the report.
If there were a ready solution to Iraq's travails, policymakers presumably would have chosen it already. Instead, they are left with balancing tough trade-offs — and a sense that time is running out.
"The level of sectarian violence is 10 to 12 times higher than it was in January, and there is no sign that it is being reduced," says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Whatever the options are chosen, we have to have a degree of realism and self-honesty that we have lacked… We need to understand that whatever we do will involve high risk and high cost."
Increasing fragmentation in Iraq and declining support for the war in the USA have eliminated ideas that might have worked a year or two ago, says former U.S. diplomat David Mack, a consultant to Baker's group. Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told a Senate panel two weeks ago that there were four to six months left to get control of the violence in Iraq.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, offered a different timetable in an interview with USA TODAY on May 31. He said the Iraqi government had three to six months to turn around the situation — a period that expires today.
While the Baker commission recommendations, the Pentagon review and the National Security Council report all are being drafted in private, there's no secret about the options available as the United States faces its worst military crisis since the Vietnam War:
1. More troops or fewer?
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has proposed deploying 20,000 troops to Iraq in addition to the 140,000 already there — a step he estimates would require expanding the Army and Marine Corps by 100,000. William Kristol, an influential neoconservative, says 50,000 more troops should be dispatched to secure Baghdad without shifting U.S. forces from other parts of Iraq.
Abizaid suggests there might be a temporary increase in troop levels to bolster training of Iraqi units.
However, the Army and Marines can't sustain higher force levels for long, Abizaid says. Other than troops in South Korea, nearly every Army unit is either deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, recovering from a deployment or preparing for one.
What's more, Abizaid says, sending more U.S. troops might reduce the pressure on Iraqis to take over their own security.
And withdrawing troops?
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the incoming chairman of the Armed Services Committee, says a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops should begin in four to six months, an approach embraced by many other Democrats. Some anti-war Democrats want faster action. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., says U.S. troops should be redeployed as soon as they can safely move out of Iraq.
The administration says setting a timetable or pulling out troops would embolden insurgents, increase sectarian violence and create a vacuum that Iran and Syria could exploit. "There's one thing I'm not going to do," Bush said Tuesday during a visit to Latvia. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."
2. Push Iraq's leaders
Bush said he would ask Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at their meeting today in Jordan to detail what stronger action he'll take to unify the government and tackle the sectarian militias blamed for the spreading violence.
The White House wants al-Maliki to offer political concessions to Sunnis and give amnesty to insurgents who are willing to lay down their arms. David Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, told the Senate this month that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government also should pass a law distributing oil earnings fairly, including to Sunnis.
The American axiom that all politics is local applies in Baghdad, too. Al-Maliki won the prime minister's job last spring by one vote because of support from Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Phebe Marr, an Iraq historian and adviser to the Iraq Study Group, asks how al-Maliki could go after al-Sadr's Mahdi Army without losing his own job.
"It's so fractured," Marr says. "The thought that there's a person who can come and give an order and have it obeyed is a great mistake." She cautions that pushing al-Maliki aside could empower competing Shiite factions that are more closely aligned with Iran.
Al-Maliki has made little progress on two critical fronts: preparing Iraqi forces to take over security operations and disbanding the Shiite militias. He's blocked U.S. efforts to arrest top members of the Mahdi Army. A joint U.S.-Iraqi operation to stabilize Baghdad, announced with fanfare when he met with Bush at the White House in July, has been a dramatic failure.
Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, wrote a classified memo this month, reported Wednesday by The New York Times, that questioned al-Maliki's intentions and ability to counter sectarian violence.
If he doesn't, U.S. troops might have to take military action against the militias in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum named for the cleric's father and home to 2 million Shiites. That step, Marr and other analysts warn, could topple the al-Maliki government and enrage Shiites across the region.
3. Seek outside help
Bush administration officials are urging U.S. allies in the Arab world to help tamp the turmoil in Iraq. Vice President Cheney met last week with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Bush met Wednesday with King Abdullah II of Jordan. Both could use their ties with Sunni tribal groups to encourage Sunni cooperation with al-Maliki, strengthening his political standing.
However, they have little influence with the Shiite majority or Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and the Bush administration has refused to meet with two neighbors that do. The administration has had no serious talks with Iran since 2003 and no high-level meetings with Syria since early 2005.
Baker says that policy should be reversed. "You can't fulfill the mission without talking to the neighboring countries," he said in an interview with USA TODAY in September. He has talked to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and Iran's United Nations ambassador, Mohammad Javad Zarif. His commission has met twice with Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Mustapha.
Some experts doubt either nation could do much. Judith Yaphe, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., says Sunni fighters are no longer dependent on Syria for financial help because they've become self-sufficient through smuggling and other criminal activities.
What's more, both countries presumably would demand something in return. "We believe we can play a constructive role," Mustapha, the Syrian ambassador, said in an interview. However, he said, "The U.S. has to respect Syrian interests in the region we live in."
Syria would like to limit a U.N. probe into the 2004 murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri that may implicate senior Syrian officials.
For its part, Iran wants to end a quarter-century of U.S. economic sanctions and to win recognition of its rising role in the region. Chas Freeman, another adviser to the Iraq Study Group and a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, predicts the Bush administration wouldn't be able to enlist Iranian support on Iraq without agreeing to broader negotiations.
Bush on Tuesday took a hard line, reiterating that talks with Iran were off-limits until it suspends its uranium enrichment program. In any case, Yaphe says, Iran probably wouldn't be willing to curtail its support for the Shiite militias.
"Talking with Iran and Syria over the fate of Iraq is not guaranteed to get the U.S. government the results it wants," she says.
Hedging their bets
There also are no guarantees that Bush will choose to change course, though his decision this month to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, an architect of the war, seems to open the door. Robert Gates, the former CIA director nominated to replace Rumsfeld, had been a member of the Iraq Study Group.
In a statement submitted to Congress this week in advance of his confirmation hearings, Gates endorsed diplomatic engagement with Syria and Iran.
Baker's group will publish its report next Wednesday, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace, the taxpayer-funded think tank that organized the study. The recommendations will be sent first to the White House and Congress.
Biden says he then plans "extensive hearings" exploring the range of proposals on Iraq.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, some politicians have begun hedging their bets in anticipation of a reduction in U.S. troops and influence.
Last week, al-Maliki welcomed Syria's foreign minister to Baghdad, restoring diplomatic ties between the two countries after a breach of nearly a quarter-century.
And on Monday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani went to Iran, long Iraq's arch foe, and met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Talabani urged him to help "restore stability and security" in Iraq.
Contributing: Matt Kelley