Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast. I'm your host Anastasia Glova.

Today is Thursday December 7th, a day after the Iraq Study Group released its much anticipated Baker

Hamilton report recommending a new course of action in dealing with Iraq.

Today I speak to Cato's Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Christopher Preble,

about the report's shortcomings, its saving graces, and Chris's own take on how to handle the debacle.

This report seems to fall far short of the kinds of recommendations that you were hoping for.

That's right. It's not surprising. We knew quite a bit about the report even before it was issued, as I anticipated, as many people anticipated.

The Commission recommended trying to reduce U.S. troops in Iraq, but they stop short of calling for a timetable for withdrawal.

And most importantly, the withdrawal that they're proposing is based on conditions on the

ground.

And as I said in my statement and elsewhere,

the Bush administration has wanted to draw down troops in Iraq

conditions permitting for over three years

and hasn't been able to because the security conditions have not been good and that's why we still have 140,000 troops in the country and frankly I think even if the Bush administration followed the letter of the ISG's recommendations, particularly on the number of

troops in the country, there could still be quite a number of troops in Iraq

several years from now, which is I don't think in the US strategic interest.

How is the security situation in Iraq now more ripe for a drawdown of troops than it was say a year ago?

Well the truth is it's not. The security situation is, if anything, more tenuous today than it was a year ago,

primarily because the political process, which was right about this time, of course, was the nationwide elections which ultimately put

the current government in power but between the time when the elections were held and when the government

was seated we had the horrible bombing in Samarra and the violence and the sectarian kind of reprisal killings

that have taken place since then. By all indication most of the violence that's now

...