Getting Out of Iraq

"The word 'timetable' is anathema to some people," says Larry Korb, who served as assistant secretary of defense under Reagan. But in a detailed exit plan he co-authored for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, Korb calls on the Pentagon to withdraw 80,000 troops in 2006 and 60,000 more in 2007, leaving only a residual force to protect the U.S. Embassy. Others want to accelerate that schedule. The liberal Institute for Policy Studies calls for a unilateral cease-fire and an immediate cut in U.S. force levels, while the Project on Defense Alternatives, a left-leaning research group, calls its exit plan "400 Days and Out."

Negotiate With the Enemy. Long overdue, say many critics of the war, is a U.S. effort to negotiate with the other side -- not with radical Islamists tied to Al Qaeda and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq but with the dozen or so groups that make up the main force of the Iraqi resistance. "There is a whole rainbow of armed groups, including organizations that are tired of fighting and want to make a deal," says White, the former intelligence official. "The only way wars end is when you talk to the enemy."

Aiham al-Sammarae, who served as a minister in the Iraqi interim government last year, has created the National Assembly for the Unity and Reconstruction of Iraq, establishing contact with at least eleven Iraqi resistance groups who want to negotiate a cease-fire in exchange for an American withdrawal. By telephone from Amman, Jordan, al-Sammarae tells Rolling Stone that he has been privately encouraged by midlevel officials at the State Department to pursue such talks. According to former State Department officials, U.S. diplomats and military and intelligence officers in Iraq have also been talking to resistance leaders for the past six months. Yet those efforts have been undertaken on an almost freelance basis, without the administration's support.

"The reality is, you've got to talk," says retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, chief of the U.S. Central Command during the first Bush administration. "But this administration is so fucking stupid. They've pissed in the soup." Hoar believes that Jordan's King Abdullah could play a role as intermediary among the United States, the Iraqi interim government and the resistance. Amman, which has already served as a neutral staging ground for talks between the Iraqi opposition and U.S. officials, could host a regional peace conference to end the war in Iraq. The Russian government has been calling for such a conference for more than a year. "We have favored the idea of bringing in the Iraqi opposition -- the patriotic, nationalist opposition," says a spokesman for the Russian mission to the United Nations. "We are not talking about the jihadists, but the legitimate nationalist forces."

Internationalize the Effort. Nearly everyone involved in trying to extricate the United States from Iraq wants to involve the United Nations, Europe and Russia in helping to broker a settlement. "You need the international community to cover your rear end as you get out," says Cleland, the former senator. Wesley Clark, a retired general who served as supreme allied commander in Europe, blasts the White House for putting the burden of the crisis in Iraq on the armed forces. "Why are you putting all this on the military?" he asks. "You and your neocons, you and Dick Cheney, you got us into this. You've got to think about diplomacy."