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co-chair, Lee Hamilton, summarized its conclusion: “The situation in Iraq today is grave and deteriorating” the report itself warned: “If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe.” The report never referenced the possibility of “victory,” instead aiming for efforts to stabilize the country in order for all American troops not necessary for force protection to be out of Iraq by early 2008.
The report even accused the administration of “significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq.” It then proceeded to echo a charge made over the course of several years by war opponents—namely, that the administration was concealing negative information about Iraq from the American public in order to maintain support for the war. The report pointedly noted: “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.”
The bipartisan commission, composed of five Republicans and five Democrats, was the very embodiment of The Respected Washington Establishment. It was chaired by longtime Bush family supporter James Baker, who served as secretary of state for Bush’s father and who led the charge on behalf of Bush’s successful battle over the 2000 Florida election results, a success resulting in Bush’s becoming president. Another of the commission’s Republican members, Sandra Day O’Connor, was one of the five justices whose vote halted Al Gore’s requested recount, ensuring George Bush’s inauguration.
The report rejected not merely the president’s handling of the war but also, more critically, the overall approach of the Bush administration toward the Middle East. The report’s key recommendations constituted wholesale rejections of the basic premises of the Bush approach to the Middle East—specifically, it concluded that the United States should open negotiations with the regimes in Iran and Syria to achieve stability in Iraq, and should also exert far more efforts toward facilitating an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
These recommendations, unanimously embraced by the commission, were clear repudiations of the pillars of the Bush foreign policy. The president’s approach to the Middle East was informed by his view that “Evil” regimes (his characterization of those that rule Iran and Syria) cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. The president has been equally insistent that the U.S. should remain firmly on Israel’s side rather than acting as an “honest broker” between it and its “Evil terrorist” enemies.
That such a panel—composed of wise, respected Washington elites, including some Bush supporters—would issue such a resounding rejection of the president’s handling of the war and his overall foreign policy constituted nothing short of the political establishment’s full-scale rebellion over the course the president had chosen for the United States. Writing in Salon , Gary Kamiya described the report as “a call for the United States to radically change its policies in the Middle East,” and explained:

Under normal circumstances, the chances would be nil that a bipartisan panel made up of such wild radicals as Sandra Day O’Connor, Vernon Jordan and Alan Simpson would bluntly assert that “the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” or insist that we begin talking with states we deem supporters of terrorism. Holding Israel’s feet to the fire, which is what “dealing directly” with the conflict means, is politically radioactive in Washington—or it was.
But Bush’s Iraq debacle has exacerbated the contradictions and weaknesses of our Mideast policy and raised the stakes for the United States so high that it has become impossible for neutral observers to simply mouth the party line. Just as the thought of the gallows concentrates the mind, so a war that has