Crunch Time on Iraq: What Do Troops Think?

Dec. 6, 2006 — -- It's finally crunch time at the White House.

Today, the Iraq Study Group tasked with finding a solution to Iraq is laying out its ideas.

President Bush has been handed a failing grade on the war that defines his presidency and has been offered some unwelcome fixes by former Secretary of State James A. Baker, and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, co-chairmen of the commission on the war in Iraq.

Here are some of the suggestions found in the Iraq Study Group's report, "The Way Forward":

The report does not contain an immediate timetable for troop withdrawal, and it has plenty of language leaving that decision up to the commanders on the ground.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said he saw up sides and down sides to the report.

"The first thing I would say about all these plans in general is they're either unnecessary or impossible," Friedman said today on "Good Morning America."

"That is, there is a core of Iraqis who want to live together, in which case all these proposals are unnecessary, or there isn't, in which case they're impossible."

But the up side, Friedman said, is that the report could send a signal to Iraqis that they have to take control of the situation themselves.

"In case you haven't noticed, the American people just fired George Bush and they fired him over the question of Iraq," he said. "The signal this report sends is we are leaving one way or another.So we're no longer going to be providing a floor under your civil war."

While the politicians struggle to chart a new course in Iraq, the troops on the ground still have a job to do -- a job that seems to get harder all the time.

"We are definitely caught between sectarian violence," 1st Class Sgt. Brent Paine said to ABC News. "We get put out in between it a lot of times. It's hard to tell who to kinda side with."