When last we checked in with the Iraq Study Group, they were fast on their way to becoming a clue in the Times crossword puzzle: Would-be Iraq saviors with aging frames. They were going to get America out of Iraq, but after the report was issued and ISG members spent a week in the spotlight, their report became an orphan. Their 79 recommendations took flak from the Left and the Right while President Bush paid them little heed. And so the group retreated into the holidays without marshalling a defense of their work, and the debate moved on to insurgents, troop surges, and the disconnect between Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But in a series of revealing interviews with members of the panel in the weeks after their report disappeared from cable news crawls, it becomes clear that however many of the recommendations the president followed, the U.S. policy debate would still be more entrenched and less informed if not for the Iraq Study Group.
When Congress created the 10-member panel in March of last year, it received the normal eye-rolling that accompanies blue-ribbon commissions. They are, often enough, Washington's snooze button: a group of sages given an insoluble problem by politicians who want to duck hard choices but have their act of delegation look like action. Such panels usually examine the past (the 9/11 Commission) or ponder the distant future (the 1983 panel that diagnosed Social Security's metastasis). The Iraq Study Group was different: It had to assess rapid changes in the neighborhoods and mosques of Iraq and forecast the political climate back home. "We were trying to hit a moving target," says ISG co-chair and former secretary of state James Baker.
Just how fast things were moving became clear when seven of the members visited Baghdad in August 2006. The trip started in familiar luxury at Andrews Air Force Base, where they boarded a custom-outfitted 737 like those most of them had flown during their years of government service, replete with a conference area and work spaces. But after they landed in Kuwait, all amenities vanished. The group took off in a C-130 Hercules, a mammoth flying can that treats humans like cargo. The seated VIPs faced one another—hip-to-hip and knee-to-knee—on cherry-red jump seats beside infantrymen in full combat kit with assault weapons. The soldiers slept, joked, and leafed through magazines. "Here were guys going into harm's way, and they were doing it like they were getting onto a bus and going to work," says Paul Hughes, who coordinated the ISG's military and security experts. What had been a theoretical exercise for the five-month-old group instantly became real. "It was difficult to look at these young kids in their combat uniform," says Leon Panetta, former chief of staff under Bill Clinton. "You couldn't help but wonder how many of them were going to be able to go back home."
The C-130 descended in a corkscrew pattern to avoid surface-to-air missiles, and soldiers on the plane joked that the plunge often caused so many passengers to vomit that the plane had to be hosed out. Before the descent, the members donned flak jackets and helmets and upon landing hustled into a Mad Max–style vehicle known as a Rhino. Built to withstand all but a direct tank round, the vehicle wasn't actually going anywhere; it was simply the safest place for a security briefing. A State Department security team described the kinds of attacks they might suffer, and the group dashed into four Black Hawk helicopters for the seven-minute tree-skimming flight to their base of operations in one of Saddam's grand palaces. Apache gunships flanked them on their ride. Members were told not to be worried if they heard the Apaches fire flares to distract heat-seeking missiles. Below, the members saw a beige city in a state of siege. Racing into the Green Zone, the visitors found that even the safest part of Iraq was fully embattled. "The word 'grim' is what expresses it," says Lee Hamilton of the team's only trip to Baghdad. "It was just depressing."
