Will Iraq Study Group Come Up With New Ideas?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27, 2006 — -- It may be the most exclusive group in Washington: a who's who of political heavyweights, tasked with the Herculean challenge of coming up with a solution in Iraq.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has been meeting secretly ever since it was established by Congress in March. The group has conducted hundreds of interviews and even visited Iraq.

Now comes the hard part: agreeing on a recommendation.

Some experts argue that the group is unlikely to come up with any sort of silver bullet -- or even any fresh ideas.

"It's a great group, but what they're doing is essentially regurgitating and re-debating ideas that have largely been in the public mix for the last four years already," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on ABC News Now's "Politics Live." "I would be very surprised ... if we all of a sudden heard radically big new ideas that hadn't been expressed or considered previously."

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., a member of the Armed Services Committee, was even more blunt about the difficulty of the task.

"If they can articulate a policy that works, I'm going to be the first to nominate them for a Nobel Peace Prize," he said.

The report -- to be released next month -- is expected to recommend talks with Syria and Iran, a policy that the group's co-chair, former Secretary of State James Baker, has publicly advocated.

More controversial is the question of whether to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill are urging for a speedy withdrawal: Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the next chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is pushing for a phased redeployment, beginning in the next four to six months.

But Baker has argued against such a strategy.

"I think if we picked up and left right now, that you would see the biggest civil war you've ever seen," he said last month in an interview on ABC's "This Week."