Wow. Big news from the Baker com­mis­sion:

The bipar­ti­san Iraq Study Group reached a con­sen­sus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a grad­ual pull­back of the 15 American com­bat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of set­ting a firm timetable for their with­drawal, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the pan­els delib­er­a­tions.
The report, unan­i­mously approved by the 10-​​member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be deliv­ered to President Bush next week. It is a com­pro­mise between dis­tinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoid­ing a spe­cific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but mak­ing it clear that the American troop com­mit­ment should not be open-​​ended. The rec­om­men­da­tions of the group, formed at the request of mem­bers of Congress, are non­bind­ing.
A per­son who par­tic­i­pated in the com­mis­sions debate said that unless the gov­ern­ment of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-​​Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pres­sure to pull back troops in the near future, there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the polit­i­cal set­tle­ment that needs to be reached.
The report rec­om­mends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the with­drawal rel­a­tively soon, and peo­ple famil­iar with the debate over the final lan­guage said the implicit mes­sage was that the process should begin some­time next year.
The report leaves unstated whether the 15 com­bat brigades that are the bulk of American fight­ing forces in Iraq would be brought home, or sim­ply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. (A brigade typ­i­cally con­sists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing a sub­stan­tial num­ber of American troops who would remain in Iraq, includ­ing 70,000 or more American train­ers, logis­tics experts and mem­bers of a rapid reac­tion force. 

So how will the President react?

“I know there’s a lot of spec­u­la­tion that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of grace­ful exit out of Iraq,” the pres­i­dent said dur­ing a joint news con­fer­ence with Mr. Maliki, refer­ring to the panel’s reports that are expected next week. “We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the gov­ern­ment wants us there.”

So what’s the right move? Speak up!
UPDATE 4:29 PM: Feeling in the slight­est bit upbeat? Like there’s a shred of hope for good in the world? John Robb should take care of that. His fore­cast for Iraq:

The US will find itself forced to remain in Iraq indef­i­nitely, despite an inabil­ity to achieve any mean­ing­ful vic­tory con­di­tions. The rea­son for this is sim­ple. Iraq is a core pro­ducer of oil for global mar­kets. Control of this oil can­not be ceded to either the guer­ril­las or Iran under any mean­ing­ful inter­pre­ta­tion of US pol­icy. Further, a full US with­drawal would put Saudi Arabia at risk — the col­lapse of both of these oil pro­duc­ers in tan­dem would plunge the global econ­omy into a depres­sion. As a result, the US will stay. The most likely result is that the US will recon­fig­ure its remain­ing forces to play the role of the “strongest fac­tion” in Iraq.
This new role is the inevitable result of the US with­drawal from paci­fi­ca­tion oper­a­tions (par­tic­u­larly in Anbar), the evap­o­ra­tion of fund­ing for recon­struc­tion (Bechtel’s depar­ture from Iraq marked the end of the effort), and the fail­ure of the effort to rebuild the Iraqi mil­i­tary (due to a deficit of loy­alty to the gov­ern­ment). As the strongest fac­tion in Iraq, the US will adopt the strat­egy of a spoiler. This means that we will remain in Iraq to pre­vent (through the deci­sive appli­ca­tion of force) any Iraqi fac­tion (that is antag­o­nis­tic to the US) or Iran from gain­ing con­trol of Iraq and its oil. The US pres­ence will also attempt to pre­vent the spread of the con­flict to Saudi Arabia. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this role evolves over the next few decades, par­tic­u­larly as the con­flict (despite US efforts, or worse, due to the inad­ver­tent con­se­quences of US efforts) spreads to Saudi Arabia. At that point, the entire strat­egy deck will be reshuf­fled (almost cer­tainly for the worse, from the US perspective).

UPDATE 5:42 PM: Check out Fred Kaplan’s take, too.

It’s hard to jus­tify keep­ing even 50,000 American troops in Iraqeven if they’re just sit­ting there­un­less they have a mis­sion. The mis­sion might serve as an adjunct to a broader polit­i­cal ini­tia­tive.
If Iraq falls apart, the bor­der­ing states will be tempted to rush into the vac­uum, partly for their own secu­rity, partly for aggran­dize­ment. If they do, their forces may brush up against one another (Iraq’s inter­nal sec­tar­ian bor­ders are far from dis­tinct). The United States could serve as a medi­a­tor to keep this from hap­pen­ing. To play this role, it helps to have troops on the ground and planes in the air.
This may be the only real pur­pose of a U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence in Iraq at this pointto keep the coun­try and the region from erupt­ing into flames.