Eyevine

AT LONG last, Washington has emerged from its state of denial and is embroiled in the mother of all debates over what to do about Iraq. For the past three years, the Bush administration has insisted that the only reasonable policy is to “stay the course”—and has demonised the opposition as Defeaticrats. The Bush code of omertà has more or less prevented leaks. And the Democrats have been sidelined by a combination of powerlessness and internal divisions.

All this has changed. George Bush now admits that “stay the course” is no longer a viable option. The administration is springing leaks all over the place—the past week has seen the leaking of two sensitive memos, one by Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush's national security adviser, casting doubt on the Iraqi prime minister's competence, and one by Donald Rumsfeld, the outgoing defence secretary, admitting that the current strategy is not working. And the Democrats are preparing to take over both houses of Congress after an election that delivered an overwhelmingly negative verdict on Mr Bush's administration in general and his Iraq policy in particular.

The reason is simple: American policy in Iraq is collapsing. During his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Mr Rumsfeld's designated successor, Robert Gates, conceded that America is not winning the war in Iraq. He said that “all options” are now on the table—and worried that failure could lead to a regional conflagration.

The centrepiece of the week was the publication of the Iraq Study Group's report on Iraq. The members of the ISG spent December 6th in a grand procession through the corridors of power. They met the president at 7am. They met House leaders at 8.30 and Senate leaders straight after that. They then gave a riveting press conference at 11 o'clock. The two chairmen of the group—Lee Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman, and James Baker, a former secretary of state—will be fixtures on the airwaves for days.

Those people who predicted an exercise in bureaucratic blandness were confounded. From the very first bleak words of the report—“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating”—the world was left in no doubt that this is a deadly serious exercise. The ISG ruled out several widely-discussed solutions: staying the course (dismissed in 14 lines as “not sustainable”), radically increasing troop numbers, dividing the country along ethnic lines or “precipitate withdrawal”. Instead, it recommended a combination of three main policies (see article).

The first is to change the primary mission of American troops towards support and training. The second is a performance-related approach to managing Iraq—helping Iraqis to help themselves but threatening penalties should they fail. The third is a “new diplomatic offensive” aimed at engaging Iraq's neighbours in stabilising the region, and including getting more deeply engaged in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The ISG envisages removing most American combat troops from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008—barely a year from now—leaving a greatly-reduced force behind to train Iraqis, provide logistical support and fight al-Qaeda.

How likely is it that Mr Bush will listen to Messrs Baker and Hamilton? The report, after all, demolishes the approach that Mr Bush has taken to national security since September 11th 2001—sidelining grand ideas about democratisation and emphasising negotiation with powers that Mr Bush has demonised as untouchables. Militarily, it is withdrawal by any other name, and not far short of precipitate.

The White House has been sending mixed signals since the mid-term elections. During his ill-starred meeting on November 29th with the Iraqi prime minister, Mr Bush complained: “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...this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all.” The White House has repeatedly stressed that the ISG is only one of three reports being prepared on Iraq (the other two are being prepared by the White House and the Pentagon).

But Mr Bush may now be open to new ideas on Iraq. Mr Hadley has been all over the airwaves suggesting that the president is planning to announce “a new way forward” in coming weeks. Mr Bush himself responded to the report by saying that he will take it “very seriously”.

The president likes to present himself as a Churchillian figure who is impervious to the winds of opinion. But in fact he has a long record of resisting new ideas until the last moment—and then claiming those new ideas as his own. Remember how he was opposed to the Department of Homeland Security until he was for it? The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton report gives Mr Bush an excuse for making just such a pivot.

The ideological tenor of the administration is changing rapidly. Mr Gates is much keener on engaging the other powers in the region than Mr Rumsfeld. The hawkish John Bolton is leaving his job as ambassador to the United Nations. Mr Rumsfeld left a parting memo, written just before the mid-term elections, which suggests that even he had lost confidence in his own policies. He admitted that “what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.” His laundry-list of options included lowering expectations and withdrawing troops to the periphery of the country.

The Democrats are also signalling a growing willingness to co-operate with the administration in dealing with what everybody now recognises is a foreign-policy disaster. They are losing interest in precipitate withdrawal, a position strongly favoured by rank-and-file party members. (Military commanders believe that this could produce internal and regional chaos.) And they are clearly excited by the idea of engaging Iran and Syria in a regional compromise. On December 7th Tony Blair—a man hugely respected on both sides of the aisle—added support to the Baker-Hamilton formula.

The biggest obstacles to any grand bargain on Iraq may well be practical rather than ideological. Is Condoleezza Rice up to the job of acting as a regional power-broker? (Her performance during the Israel-Hizbullah war was notably weak.) Has the State Department got sufficient firepower to lend her support? (She currently has no deputy and one of her top advisers is leaving.) Is training the Iraqi army anything more than a pipe-dream? (According to one estimate, only one in four of Iraq's army battalions is able to “perform a useful function”.) And, above all, why should Iran and Syria promote regional stability? For all the sober and sensible recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, getting out of Iraq is going to prove a lot harder than getting in.