Clinton and The Paw Paw Patch!

A new pipeline is being built to avoid oil flow problems should the Straits of Hormuz be closed. (See 1 below.)

George Friedman analyzes the recent NIE summary regarding Iraq progress or lack thereof. (See 2 below.)

There seems to be some fund raising skulduggery again by the Clinton's. This time with the Paw family in California.

Sarkozy speaks out about the US and Iran and the potential for a military confrontation. (See 3 below.)

Meanwhile Strategic Affairs Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is opposed to military action against Iran at this time and counsels diplomacy and sanctions. (See 4 below.)

Olmert and Abbas meet and discuss future intentions. (See 5 below.)

Dennis Ross on Iraq. We must use leverage if we are to get the Shia to act in their own behalf as well as ours. (See 6 below.)

Dick



1) New Arabian Oil Pipeline Will Detour Hormuz


Oil sources report Kuwait and Qatar, though members of the GCC, have opted out of the Trans-Arabia pipeline project.

The two emirates are deeply involved in building a gas pipeline network which is a higher priority for them than the transport of oil - especially Qatar which has large gas reserves but not much oil.

Southern Iraq’s oil is therefore projected to flow directly into Saudi Arabia and bypass Kuwait.

The Trans-Arabia Oil Pipeline network will consist of five main branches:

Pipeline No. 1: Work begins on this section in November. It will run 350 km from Ras Tannura on the Saudi easern coast to Al Fujairah in the United Emirates, also collecting cruide from Abu Dhabi’s Habashan oil field. Its 48-inch diameter provides a capacity of 1.5 million bpd.

Pipeline No. 2: This will link Ras Tannura to Musqat, Oman.

Pipeline No. 3: This will run southwest from Ras Tannura through Hadhramouth and onto Mukalla, on the Yemeni shore of the Gulf of Aden.

Pipeline No. 4: This pipeline will will also terminate at Mukalla, but first circle round from Ras Tannura to the UAE before turning back into Saudi Arabia and on to Yemen.

Pipeline No. 5: This line will slice across Arabia from Ras Tannura in the East due west to Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s western coast on the Red Sea.

This route is already occupied by two older pipelines. They were laid in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war for the very same purpose as the contemporry project, namely to circumvent the Straits of Hormuz. One was built to carry Iraqi oil out to market away from the war zones of the Iranian-Iraqi frontier.

Alive to possible Iranian or al Qaeda sabotage attempts, the Trans-Arabia Pipeline partners have decided to sink large sections underground and secure the system with such obstructions as fences, earthworks, moats and roadblocks. The new oil force will man the system.

According to estimates, even after the US pulls its army out of Iraq, it will retain troops for securing both the northern and southern oil fields and installations. They will be there to keep Iran at a distance, especially from the the Basra oil center.

The project also fits into the preparations underway in the Gulf oil emirates and Saudi Arabia to step up oil production by 4 million bpd to rein in skyrocketing prices before they hit $100 per barrel.

On the inter-Arab plane, Riyadh hopes Syrian Bashar Assad will appreciate the benefits accruing to his country from the pipeline across its territory - enough to draw away from his close clinch with Iran and mend his fences with Washington. The Saudis are pinning their hopes on Tapline’s resurrection helping to put Damascus-Washington relations on a new footing.

2) Endgame: American Options in Iraq
By Dr. George Friedman

The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) summarizing the U.S. intelligence community's view of Iraq contains two critical findings: First, the Iraqi government is not jelling into an effective entity. Iraq's leaders, according to the NIE, neither can nor want to create an effective coalition government. Second, U.S. military operations under the surge have improved security in some areas, but on the whole have failed to change the underlying strategic situation. Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias remain armed, motivated and operational.

Since the Iraq insurgency began in 2003, the United States has had a clear strategic goal: to create a pro-American coalition government in Baghdad. The means for achieving this was the creation of a degree of security through the use of U.S. troops. In this more secure environment, then, a government would form, create its own security and military forces, with the aid of the United States, and prosecute the war with diminishing American support. This government would complete the defeat of the insurgents and would then govern Iraq democratically.

What the NIE is saying is that, more than four years after the war began, the strategic goal has not been achieved -- and there is little evidence that it will be achieved. Security has not increased significantly in Iraq, despite some localized improvement. In other words, the NIE is saying that the United States has failed and there is no strong evidence that it will succeed in the future.

We must be careful with pronouncements from the U.S. intelligence community, but in this case it appears to be stating the obvious. Moreover, given past accusations of skewed intelligence to suit the administration, it is hard to imagine many in the intelligence community risking their reputations and careers to distort findings in favor of an administration with 18 months to go. We think the NIE is reasonable. Therefore, the question is: What is to be done?

For a long time, we have seen U.S.-Iranian negotiations on Iraq as a viable and even likely endgame. We no longer believe that to be the case. For these negotiations to have been successful, each side needed to fear a certain outcome. The Americans had to fear that an ongoing war would drain U.S. resources indefinitely. The Iranians had to fear that the United States would be able to create a viable coalition government in Baghdad or impose a U.S.-backed regime dominated by their historical Sunni rivals.

Following the Republican defeat in Congress in November, U.S. President George W. Bush surprised Iran by increasing U.S. forces in Iraq rather than beginning withdrawals. This created a window of a few months during which Tehran, weighing the risks and rewards, was sufficiently uncertain that it might have opted for an agreement thrusting the Shiites behind a coalition government. That moment has passed. As the NIE points out, the probability of forming any viable government in Baghdad is extremely low. Iran no longer is facing its worst-case scenario. It has no motivation to bail the United States out.

What, then, is the United States to do? In general, three options are available. The first is to maintain the current strategy. This is the administration's point of view. The second is to start a phased withdrawal, beginning sometime in the next few months and concluding when circumstances allow. This is the consensus among most centrist Democrats and a growing number of Republicans. The third is a rapid withdrawal of forces, a position held by a fairly small group mostly but not exclusively on the left. All three conventional options, however, suffer from fatal defects.

Bush's plan to stay the course would appear to make relatively little sense. Having pursued a strategic goal with relatively fixed means for more than four years, it is unclear what would be achieved in years five or six. As the old saw goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different outcome. Unless Bush seriously disagrees with the NIE, it is difficult to make a case for continuing the current course.

Looking at it differently, however, there are these arguments to be made for maintaining the current strategy: Whatever mistakes might have been made in the past, the current reality is that any withdrawal from Iraq would create a vacuum, which would rapidly be filled by Iran. Alternatively, Iraq could become a jihadist haven, focusing attention not only on Iraq but also on targets outside Iraq. After all, a jihadist safe-haven with abundant resources in the heart of the Arab world outweighs the strategic locale of Afghanistan. Therefore, continuing the U.S. presence in Iraq, at the cost of 1,000-2,000 American lives a year, prevents both outcomes, even if Washington no longer has any hope of achieving the original goal.

In other words, the argument is that the operation should continue indefinitely in order to prevent a more dangerous outcome. The problem with this reasoning, as we have said, is that it consumes available ground forces, leaving the United States at risk in other parts of the world. The cost of this decision would be a massive increase of the U.S. Army and Marines, by several divisions at least. This would take several years to achieve and might not be attainable without a draft. In addition, it assumes the insurgents and militias will not themselves grow in size and sophistication, imposing greater and greater casualties on the Americans. The weakness of this argument is that it assumes the United States already is facing the worst its enemies can dish out. The cost could rapidly grow to more than a couple of thousand dead a year.

The second strategy is a phased withdrawal. That appears to be one of the most reasonable, moderate proposals. But consider this: If the mission remains the same -- fight the jihadists and militias in order to increase security -- then a phased withdrawal puts U.S. forces in the position of carrying out the same mission with fewer troops. If the withdrawal is phased over a year or more, as most proposals suggest, it creates a situation in which U.S. forces are fighting an undiminished enemy with a diminished force, without any hope of achieving the strategic goal.

The staged withdrawal would appear to be the worst of all worlds. It continues the war while reducing the already slim chance of success and subjects U.S. forces to increasingly unfavorable correlations of forces. Phased withdrawal would make sense in the context of increasingly effective Iraqi forces under a functional Iraqi government, but that assumes either of these things exists. It assumes the NIE is wrong.

The only context in which phased withdrawal makes sense is with a redefined strategic goal. If the United States begins withdrawing forces, it must accept that the goal of a pro-American government is not going to be reached. Therefore, the troops must have a mission. And the weakness of the phased withdrawal proposals is that they each extend the period of time of the withdrawal without clearly defining the mission of the remaining forces. Without a redefinition, troop levels are reduced over time, but the fighters who remain still are targets -- and still take casualties. The moderate case, then, is the least defensible.

The third option is an immediate withdrawal. Immediate withdrawal is a relative concept, of course, since it is impossible to withdraw 150,000 troops at once. Still, what this would consist of is an immediate cessation of offensive operations and the rapid withdrawal of personnel and equipment. Theoretically, it would be possible to pull out the troops but leave the equipment behind. In practical terms, the process would take about three to six months from the date the order was given.

If withdrawal is the plan, this scenario is more attractive than the phased process. It might increase the level of chaos in Iraq, but that is not certain, nor is it clear whether that is any longer an issue involving the U.S. national interest. Its virtue is that it leads to the same end as phased withdrawal without the continued loss of American lives.

The weakness of this strategy is that it opens the door for Iran to dominate Iraq. Unless the Turks wanted to fight the Iranians, there is no regional force that could stop Iran from moving in, whether covertly, through the infiltration of forces, or overtly. Remember that Iran and Iraq fought a long, vicious war -- in which Iran suffered about a million casualties. This, then, simply would be the culmination of that war in some ways. Certainly the Iranians would face bitter resistance from the Sunnis and Kurds, and even from some Shia. But the Iranians have much higher stakes in this game than the Americans, and they are far less casualty-averse, as the Iran-Iraq war demonstrated. Their pain threshold is set much higher than the Americans' and their willingness to brutally suppress their enemies also is greater.

The fate of Iraq would not be the most important issue. Rather, it would be the future of the Arabian Peninsula. If Iran were to dominate Iraq, its forces could deploy along the Saudi border. With the United States withdrawn from the region -- and only a residual U.S. force remaining in Kuwait -- the United States would have few ways to protect the Saudis, and a limited appetite for more war. Also, the Saudis themselves would not want to come under U.S. protection. Most important, all of the forces in the Arabian Peninsula could not match the Iranian force.

The Iranians would be facing an extraordinary opportunity. At the very least, they could dominate their historical enemy, Iraq. At the next level, they could force the Saudis into a political relationship in which the Saudis had to follow the Iranian lead -- in a way, become a junior partner to Iran. At the next level, the Iranians could seize the Saudi oil fields. And at the most extreme level, the Iranians could conquer Mecca and Medina for the Shia. If the United States has simply withdrawn from the region, these are not far fetched ideas. Who is to stop the Iranians if not the United States? Certainly no native power could do so. And if the United States were to intervene in Saudi Arabia, then what was the point of withdrawal in the first place?

All three conventional options, therefore, contain serious flaws. Continuing the current strategy pursues an unattainable goal. Staged withdrawal exposes fewer U.S. troops to more aggressive enemy action. Rapid withdrawal quickly opens the door for possible Iranian hegemony -- and lays a large part of the world's oil reserves at Iran's feet.

The solution is to be found in redefining the mission, the strategic goal. If the goal of creating a stable, pro-American Iraq no longer is possible, then what is the U.S. national interest? That national interest is to limit the expansion of Iranian power, particularly the Iranian threat to the Arabian Peninsula. This war was not about oil, as some have claimed, although a war in Saudi Arabia certainly would be about oil. At the extreme, the conquest of the Arabian Peninsula by Iran would give Iran control of a huge portion of global energy reserves. That would be a much more potent threat than Iranian nuclear weapons ever could be.

The new U.S. mission, therefore, must be to block Iran in the aftermath of the Iraq war. The United States cannot impose a government on Iraq; the fate of Iraq's heavily populated regions cannot be controlled by the United States. But the United States remains an outstanding military force, particularly against conventional forces. It is not very good at counterinsurgency and never has been. The threat to the Arabian Peninsula from Iran would be primarily a conventional threat -- supplemented possibly by instability among Shia on the peninsula.

The mission would be to position forces in such a way that Iran could not think of moving south into Saudi Arabia. There are a number of ways to achieve this. The United States could base a major force in Kuwait, threatening the flanks of any Iranian force moving south. Alternatively, it could create a series of bases in Iraq, in the largely uninhabited regions south and west of the Euphrates. With air power and cruise missiles, coupled with a force about the size of the U.S. force in South Korea, the United States could pose a devastating threat to any Iranian adventure to the south. Iran would be the dominant power in Baghdad, but the Arabian Peninsula would be protected.

This goal could be achieved through a phased withdrawal from Iraq, along with a rapid withdrawal from the populated areas and an immediate cessation of aggressive operations against jihadists and militia. It would concede what the NIE says is unattainable without conceding to Iran the role of regional hegemon. It would reduce forces in Iraq rapidly, while giving the remaining forces a mission they were designed to fight -- conventional war. And it would rapidly reduce the number of casualties. Most important, it would allow the United States to rebuild its reserves of strategic forces in the event of threats elsewhere in the world.

This is not meant as a policy prescription. Rather, we see it as the likely evolution of U.S. strategic thinking on Iraq. Since negotiation is unlikely, and the three conventional options are each defective in their own way, we see this redeployment as a reasonable alternative that meets the basic requirements. It ends the war in Iraq in terms of casualties, it reduces the force, it contains Iran and it frees most of the force for other missions. Whether Bush or his successor is the decision-maker, we think this is where it must wind up.

3)Sarkozy is first Western leader to speak out loud about US plan to bomb Iran



Addressing 180 French diplomats Monday, Aug. 27, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said a nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable and the world must tighten sanctions while offering Tehran incentives to halt weapons development. “This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” he said.

Sarkozy thus became the first important Western leader to declare with brutal frankness that Iran stands in peril of an attack on its nuclear installations.

He spoke out shortly after a long holiday in the United States and a day-long visit to the Bush family estate in Maine. His frank language – he called Iran’s nuclear ambition the world’s most dangerous problem – caused astonishment in diplomatic circles much like the jeans he wore on his visit to the US president.

Sarkozy did not indicate whether France would take part in an American or Israeli attack on Iran, but he did stress French backing for Security Council sanctions over Iran’s refusal to back away from uranium enrichment.

Diplomatic sources disclose that Sarkozy’s warning to Tehran was the bluntest but not the only one Tehran received of the Bush administration plans to bomb its nuclear facilities. Iran was discreetly warned by the Kremlin in early spring that an American attack was impending and would be coordinated with an Israeli strike against Syria. All three armies, the Iranian (plus Hizballah), Syrian and Israeli, have been deep in hectic war preparations ever since.

This war fever will be further heated by Sarkozy’s words. They certainly contradict Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak’s smooth assurance to the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee, also on Monday, that he sees first signs of Syrian military suspense ebbing.

The French president’s reading of the situation was closer to that of the former US ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, whose impressions from talks with Syrian officials underscored the Syrian president Bashar Assad’s unshakeable commitment to Tehran’s foreign and military policies, even if his relations with Washington do improve.

Like Barak, Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is trying to pour oil on troubled waters. He sent inspectors to Tehran to collect understandings and so fend off the third round of sanctions promised at the UN Security Council next month.

The IAEA and Iran jointly announced Monday they had “agreed a timeline for implementing a plan to clarify Tehran’s nuclear program.”

Iran took this some steps further, claiming “the IAEA accepted that earlier statements made by Iran (on the issue of plutonium) are consistent with the agency’s findings and thus this matter is resolved.” Tehran also announced cooperation with a nuclear watchdog probe of an “alleged secret uranium processing project linked by U.S. intelligence to a nuclear arms program.”

Washington is not buying this show of Iranian compliance and zeal for cooperation with the world community. The US ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna pointed to “real limitations” in the timeline understanding and accused Tehran of “manipulating the IAEA as a way to avoid harsher sanctions.”

ElBaradei had previously called a military attack on Iran “madness.”

4) By Ronny Sofer

Economic sanctions, not military actions, are the right tools to deal with
Iran right now, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday
evening in an interview with Israel Radio's Persian language channel.

"I don't think that a military solution is the right way to go at this
point," Lieberman said in response to a question regarding Israeli action
against Iran... The most effective way to stop the Iranian nuclear program
is through economic sanctions. This was the case in Libya and Korea," he
stated

"Unfortunately however, those who will pay the price (of sanctions) are the
Iranian people. Already their gasoline is being rationed and there is
inflation and unemployment. All the major banks in Iran are on the verge of
bankruptcy," he said.

"I hope that the extremist leadership of (Iranian President) Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad will be replaced by a leadership that cares about the Iranian
people," he added.

Lieberman, who answered questions put to him by Iranian listeners, said he
hoped that relations between Iran and Israel would eventually return to the
level of cordiality that existed prior to the Islamic revolution in 1979.

"I hope that the current leadership is a passing phase and that the two
nations will return to be as they were. We want to cooperate with Iranians,
in contrast to Ahmadinejad, who wants to wipe Israel off the map," he said.

"We don't want to hurt or harm the Iranian people. We want peace, and
financial and cultural cooperation. The current Iranian regime is bunch of
criminals, a group that endangers the peace in Iran and world peace."

"The Iranian leadership is set. They hold sums of money in foreign bank
accounts. The Iranian population is comprised of good and serious people. We
have had a good history and good experiences with them. They are those who
need to exert pressure on the leadership," he added.

"The Iranian leadership is not investing money in healthcare, education or
the creation of jobs, but rather investing in world terror and Hizbullah.
Therefore, I suggest to citizens of Iran that next time they go vote, they
think hard who they are voting for," he told listeners.

5) Israel offers Palestinians control of Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin.

The teams of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas met in Jerusalem Tuesday, ahead of a private meeting between the two leaders.


Israel Radio reported that during the extended talks the Israelis gave their Palestinian counterparts general offers on core issues. An unnamed official was quoted as saying that the points on which the sides reached some degree of accord would then be discussed in more detail in higher-level negotiations.

Vice Premier Haim Ramon is slated to head the Israeli negotiating team, and Olmert and Abbas are also set continue meeting in the next few weeks.

Among the proposals made by the Israeli team was an offer to share control of the Temple Mount between the three major religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) and to cede control of the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to the PA. The policing of major West Bank towns Ramallah, Jenin and Nablus would also be given to the Palestinians.

During the discussions both sides agreed to work towards a joint security conference with representatives from Israel, Egypt, US and the PA to examine ways to stanch weapons smuggling from Egypt.

However, a proposal to dig a tunnel along the Philadelphi corridor was dismissed because of technical difficulties, Israel Radio reported.

Olmert and Abbas also discussed Abbas's request to release more Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Olmert told Abbas he would soon present a plan Israeli security officials are drawing up to permit greater freedom of movement within the West Bank, which is restricted by IDF roadblocks, Baker said.

Both sides also agreed to continue the meetings between Israeli and Palestinian ministers to discuss nature preservation, economy and culture.

A joint Palestinian-Israeli economic council will be launched, apparently in October in Tel Aviv, in the presence of Olmert, Abbas and international Mideast envoy Tony Blair, Baker added.

The prime minister emphasized that renewed relations between Hamas and Fatah would lead to halting of discussions.

An unconfirmed Al Jazeera report claimed that the Israeli proposal made no mention of the Palestinian "right of return," but that it called to create a demilitarized Palestinian state within the borderlines of June 4th 1967.

In exchange for large settlements Israel would like to keep, it would turn over unsettled ground equal in size to the Palestinians, the Qatar-based channel claimed. Neither Palestinian nor Israeli sources verified any of the details reported by Al Jazeera.

Upon entering the prime minister's house Abbas paused to write a brief comment in the prime minister's guest book. "I am honored to meet with you in your home. I hope and wish that peace between us will move forward, and the two people will witness the peace that we wish to arrive at," he wrote.

But just before the meeting Abbas warned that a planned international peace conference would be a "waste of time" if it failed to address the core issues of Palestinian statehood - borders, refugees and Jerusalem.

Abbas pressed Israel to be more specific on how it planned to approach the peace talks, saying Olmert's proposed "declaration of principles" would not suffice. US President George W. Bush has called for a Mideast peace conference, expected to take place in November, to advance a final Israeli-Palestinian accord.

"If there is a clear framework including final status issues, we will welcome this and go to the conference," Abbas told Voice of Palestine radio.

Olmert began the meeting by congratulating Abbas on the work of Palestinian security forces in Jenin on Monday. The PA forces rescued an IDF officer who lost his way and drove into the hostile Palestinian town.

Olmert also thanked Abbas for freezing the bank accounts of approximately a hundred charities associated with Hamas.

Earlier Tuesday, an article in the Arab daily Al Quds reported that Hamas had given Abbas a proposal on how to end the enmity between the group and Fatah.

The report, quoted by Army Radio, said the offer was given to Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar in Gaza, and he transferred it to Abbas.

Abbas has yet to respond to the proposal.

Abbas's position since June has been to eschew any dialogue with Hamas until the Islamist group apologizes for taking over Gaza and returns the control of the Strip to the Palestinian Authority.

But Fathi Hamad, a Hamas senior in Gaza, said only moments after Abbas and Olmert began their meeting in Olmert's official residence in Rehavia that Abbas was "behaving as if he is working for Olmert, and by this, bringing his own end nearer."

The PA chairman, on his side, issued a "message of reassurance" to his people early Tuesday morning, saying that he would only be willing to discuss a Palestinian state if Olmert offers him a final agreement, and would reject any temporary solution.

Abbas also said that while he was willing to conduct secret negotiations, any agreement reached secretly would have to pass the test of a referendum among the Palestinians in the West Bank and be approved by the PLO's Legislative Council.

6) A Stable Iraq - Statecraft
by Dennis Ross


President Bush's commitment to staying the course in Iraq remains as strong as ever. In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, he invoked the ideological struggles of the past to explain why we must prevail in the current conflict. While many have questioned his analogies to Southeast Asia and Vietnam, I found his continuing conviction that a "free Iraq" will be an "important ally in the ideological struggle of the twenty-first century" more troubling.

It is an illusion to believe that the new Iraq is going to act as our partner in the war on terrorism. Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki has demonstrated repeatedly that he does not seek trouble with either Iran or Syria. Maybe he has good reason to worry about their trouble-making capacity in Iraq, but his government has actually sought to get us to release the Iranian Revolutionary Guard members that we have seized and has done little to publicize Syria's facilitation of jihadists crossing their border into Iraq. Trying to accommodate them, however, hasn't stopped Iran or Syria from causing trouble in Iraq. President Bush has so far excused Maliki's reluctance to act externally or internally. In his VFW speech, he referred to Maliki as "a good guy" with a hard job to do. That may be, but it also indicates that Maliki will not be an ally in the struggle to change Iran and Syria's behavior.

I don't mean to single out Maliki; it seems to be a cottage industry in Washington these days to say that he is the problem in Iraq. But the problems go far deeper. Is there a Shia leader who has credibility in Iraq who seeks enmity with Iran? Certainly not one who has any prospect of emerging as an Iraqi leader. If anything, that adds to suspicions that Sunnis have of nearly every Shia leader: They are all perceived as serving Iranian, not Iraqi, interests.

It matters little whether the Sunni perceptions are correct. The prospect of an Iraq in which a new political compact can be forged is still a distant illusion. The new National Intelligence Estimate has judged that over the next six to twelve months the situation of the Iraqi government will become more precarious, not less. At the latest, the surge will end next April, because the U.S. Army does not have the available forces to sustain it longer, and it is unrealistic to believe that is long enough to create the political space needed to overcome Iraq's internal political divisions.

Truth be told, the surge itself was never going to be sufficient to overcome the psychological and political barriers that make internal compromise difficult. The fundamental problem remains that the Shia are convinced that, as the majority, they are entitled to rule, that the Sunnis are unwilling to reconcile themselves to Shia domination, and that there is, therefore, a risk that the Shia will lose their hold on power. Fearing that they can yet have power snatched away from them, the Shia remain unwilling to share it. The surge can't deal with that problem; only the possibility that the Shia risk losing everything if they don't compromise might alter their behavior.

Would, for example, Maliki and Shia leaders act differently if they thought they might actually lose material assistance for the forces they want equipped if they continue to resist all efforts at compromise? One of the Iraq Study Group's proposals was to tie security assistance to performance on benchmarks: Live up to them, and it is provided, even accelerated; fail to live up to them, and it is cut off.

Leverage is essential to the exercise of statecraft. The Iraq Study Group seemed to understand that. The Bush administration hesitates ever to apply it. Even its quasi-pressure on Maliki is primarily rhetorical. Why would he change his behavior when he sees far worse alternatives, when he is under countervailing pressures from his own base and other Shia politicians, and when he doubts that the Bush administration will change course?

Instead, we ought to be asking how we can use the process of our disengagement to affect the behavior of Iraqis and their neighbors. Our baseline objective should be to make sure that Iraq's problems are contained within Iraq. But we can still hope to achieve more than that. We can still hope to create a managed transition to an Iraq that has a central government with limited powers, provinces with extensive autonomy, and some means for sharing revenues.

Achieving such a transition is worth one last try. To do so, we should do three things. First, we should declare the surge a success and announce that we will negotiate a timetable for our withdrawal with the Iraqi government. This would give Iraqis input into the timing and shape of the withdrawal and doesn't simply impose it on them. Second, we should set a date for the convening of a national reconciliation conference. Unlike previous such conferences, it should not be permitted to disband until agreement has been reached. Success in this conference would mean greater flexibility in our approach to the timetable on withdrawal, and a stalemated conference would produce the opposite. To increase the prospects of the conference working, we should suggest that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who has credibility across sectarian lines, play a brokering role in setting the agenda of the conference and its ongoing negotiations.

Finally, we should talk to Iraq's neighbors about how to contain the conflict. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey all have little desire to see Iraq either fragment or be convulsed to the point that they get increasingly sucked into the conflict. I have my doubts about whether the neighbors will ever agree on what they want for Iraq, but they can agree on what they fear about it. From that standpoint, we should not be negotiating bilaterally with Iran on Iraq; instead, we should be trying to broker critical understandings between, for example, the Saudis and Iranians on what they will do to limit or contain the conflict.

Maybe it is too late for such an effort to work. For the Iraqis, perhaps there has been too much brutality, too much displacement, too much disbelief in the intentions of the "other," and too little willingness to accept a political solution with its attendant compromises. But at least this plan is guided by an objective that is far more rooted in the reality of Iraq than Bush's approach to date. And it might just be something that the president could accept.