WP: Analysis
Hawks Bolster Skeptical President
The Right Rages Over Group's Plan
By Michael Abramowitz and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 10, 2006; Page A03
Steady condemnation from conservatives for the Iraq Study Group report may be providing some cover to the Bush administration as it completes its own review of strategy in Iraq, apparently with little enthusiasm for the panel's prescription of U.S. troop withdrawal and dialogue with Syria and Iran.
The criticism of the panel, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), has burst forth from the leading institutions of the right: the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard; conservative talk radio; and scholars at some of Washington's top think tanks.
President Bush has spoken favorably of the panel's work as an opportunity to bring the country together, but he has been noncommittal on its key recommendations. Comments from the hawkish right, meanwhile, have often been an accurate gauge of the beliefs of key figures inside the Bush administration, especially Vice President Cheney.
Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers have embraced the panel's report, but the almost uniformly negative reaction from some of Bush's strongest conservative supporters means the president may have some political flexibility to depart from the group's major recommendations, according to some GOP operatives....
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Although it is clear that many Republicans regard the Iraq Study Group's report as a possible exit strategy from a war that they worry could drag the party down in 2008, such plans are colliding with clear anger from neoconservatives, who have been the most ardent supporters of the Bush administration since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/09/AR2006120900443.html?nav=hcmodule