What will Congress do?

IT WAS DEFTLY and diplomatically done, but the message was unmistakable.

On Wednesday, James Baker, Lee Hamilton and the Iraq Study Group essentially declared George W. Bush's foreign policy bankrupt.

In effect, the 10-member commission led by the former secretary of state laid down a set of bipartisan benchmarks for judging the Bush administration itself.

Although the group lent its prestige to giving the president a year or so to try to stabilize Iraq, they made it crystal clear he needs to reverse his (anti-)diplomatic approach.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow later maintained that the study group's conclusions and recommendations weren't a rebuke to the administration.

Actually, they really can't be read as anything but. And that's why the report, in conjunction with the imminent Democratic take-over of Congress, has the potential to change things in a big way. The report puts forward what could well become a consensus political time frame for the withdrawal of most US combat troops from Iraq, saying that could (read: should) happen by the first quarter of 2008.

To lay claim to the brief bipartisan breathing space the commission's recommendations could secure for him, the president must do a dramatic about-face.

The group as much as said the notion of a flourishing democracy in Iraq has become a pipe dream. It told an administration informed by the neo-con notion that it can remake the world according to its will and idea that it must now accept the realities of the Middle East, not just by engaging with Syria and Iran, but by seeking their inclusion in an international support group for Iraq. Further, it recommended jump-starting the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians to address broader regional concerns

Bush may try to ignore those recommendations, of course.

But if he does, the report should embolden congressional Democrats, who note, rightly, that much of their thinking is mirrored in the study group's conclusions.

Here's what Harry Reid, the incoming Senate majority leader, and Senator Richard Durbin, his number two, wrote in a memo to the study group in August: "We think it is time to transition the US mission to one of counter-terrorism, training, logistics and force protection. We also believe that a phased redeployment of US forces should begin before the end of the year. This redeployment is critical to ensuring that Iraqis begin to take the lead for the security of their nation "

They also recommended a regional diplomatic initiative and a revitalized economic reconstruction effort in Iraq. The endorsement of that basic approach by the panel of Washington wise folk should give Democrats bipartisan leverage to demand a change in administration policy.

How will Congress react if Bush merely pays lip service to the study group on its major recommendations? I asked that of Senator Joseph Biden, incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during his Wednesday conference call with reporters.

Biden said the response could range anywhere from rejecting the administration's legislative requests "to trying to get a resolution . . . to jointly condemn the president or criticize the president's failure to move."

The Delaware Democrat didn't believe that would be necessary, however, because of the pressure the president will feel from his own party.

"I don't think that a majority of the Republicans are going to allow him to ignore this report," he said. With 21 Republican Senate seats up in 2008, "I am absolutely convinced that they are not going to sit by and not let their displeasure be known" if the president won't change his approach.

The administration has a bigger problem than changing domestic political realities, however. It doesn't have a strategy for success in Iraq -- and it's far from clear that the commission's notion of a stronger, more capable central government and better-trained Iraqi forces offers one.

As Peter Galbraith has argued in "The End of Iraq" (and on this page ), you can't build an effective national military force if the various components are in a civi l war with each other.

Biden and Galbraith both favor facilitating what is already starting to take place in Iraq: the division of the country into separate, largely autonomous regions for the Shi'ites , the Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds.

Early next year, Biden plans to use the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to explore that option. With Iraq spiraling out of control, that could turn out to be the least bad of a series of unpalatable choices.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.