The combination of an announced withdrawal timeline, disavowed occupation, decommissioned bases, and revitalized reconstruction would mitigate somewhat the ongoing ethnic cleansing, murder, rape, death squad activity and other atrocities-activities which are likely to escalate upon a U.S. departure, but are inevitable regardless of whether that departure takes place now or after the deaths of tens of thousands more Americans and another percent or two of the Iraqi populace.

The ISG's members worked hard and tried to propose good faith recommendations to a situation that has no good solutions. We should be grateful for their efforts and the many good recommendations in the report. Contrary to the group's hopes and politically minded concessions, however, the report will not be adopted as a whole, and key recommendations risk providing political cover for continued flawed and counterproductive policies.

The president would be correct therefore in picking out some elements of the report. Unfortunately, he will likely eschew the very elements that would give the Iraqi, American, and world's peoples what they want: some chance of getting out of this labyrinth to restore peace and sanity.

Chip Pitts is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, President of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (www.bordc.org), and Co-Founder of www.principledaction.org.