US President George W. Bush began yesterday a new series of consultations on Iraq after a shock-therapy indictment of his conduct of the war by an independent policy commission.
Bush was scheduled to make a public show of his deliberations, starting with a visit yesterday to the US State Department and meetings with top outside experts in the Oval Office.
Today, he is scheduled to have a video-conference with military commanders and US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.
Tomorrow will see the president at the Pentagon.
Bush will huddle with top foreign policy and military aides, seeking to bounce back after the Iraq Study Group's warning that Iraq's plight is "grave and deteriorating" and without urgent action could spark a regional crisis.
Intense scrutiny, which built up ahead of the report, has now shifted to the White House, as Bush sifts options and sees his political base erode, as rival Democrats gear up to take over Congress next year.
The White House said Bush is aiming to unveil his new approach in a speech to the nation before Christmas.
"This, in the end, is about what happens on Pennsylvania Avenue and in the Oval Office," said Bruce Riedel, a veteran US foreign policy official, now with the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"The purpose of this commission is shock therapy for the Oval Office to give them an extremely cold shower and say to the President the course you are on is going to lead to catastrophe and you have got to change it," he said at a Brookings briefing.
One key question: will Bush accept the political cover offered by the study group and embrace its 79 recommendations or strike out with his own new policy?
Early signs are that the president is loath to accept calls by the bipartisan group for US talks with Syria and Iran on saving Iraq.
Such a move would require a repudiation of his own diplomatic doctrine, that states guilty of "bad behavior" don't deserve the prize of engagement with Washington.
Bush also distanced himself from the study's groups recommendation to aim to withdraw most combat troops by 2008 based on a drive to force leaders of Iraqi government factions into reconciliation and accelerated training of Iraq's armed forces by US embedded instructors.
He stressed last Thursday that troop withdrawals will be solely contingent on conditions on the ground, and advice from military commanders.
Despite the clamor in Washington for Bush to embrace the report, the White House views it as only one source of advice. Several internal administration studies of Iraq policy are shortly expected to conclude.
"There are other recommendations and suggestions and analyses coming his way in the very near future. It's his job ... to try to come up with the best complex of policies," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
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