Today is Wednesday, December 6th, and this is the Cato Daily Podcast. I'm your host

Anastasia Yaglova. The Iraq Study Group's recommendations released today

will shed some light on the changes we can expect in Iraq strategy in coming months.

Vice President for Foreign Policy and Defense Studies Ted Gale and Carpenter is here to discuss

that report.

In a recent interview with Tim Russert, NSA advisor Stephen Hadley stated,

the president said we need to make changes.

Some of those changes are going to be significant changes.

So what changes can we expect in response to the report?

In terms of substance, I think there is only likely to be one change,

and that is if the President agrees with the report that the United States needs to engage with both Syria and Iran

to try to dampen the violence in Iraq and to achieve some kind of lasting political settlement. It's not clear yet that the president's

willing to endorse that recommendation, but that certainly would be a

significant change in policy. Other than that, we're likely to see changes on the margins.

A little more pressure on the Iraqi leadership, perhaps some indication that we will withdraw

military units from Iraq beginning in 2007, but I don't

expect any dramatic changes in strategy where we may see changes will be in terms of tactics, in terms of methods of trying

to implement the administration's policy in Iraq.

Now the president has been very clear that he would not support a policy that would require us to cut and run.

We can't expect a timeline, can we?

We're very unlikely to see any kind of timeline and therein lies the problem because the Baker

Commission is outlining a strategy for withdrawal but without any specific schedule.

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