Bipartisan Senate Group Embraces Iraq Study Group's Findings

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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3247121&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Bipartisan Senate Group Embraces Iraq Study Group's Findings
Compromise Bill Would Call for Iraq Withdrawal by Early 2008

By JAKE TAPPER
June 5, 2007


Almost six months after former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana presented a comprehensive strategy for Iraq known as the Iraq Study Group recommendations -- which President Bush did not quite enthusiastically embrace -- a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced legislation Tuesday to use the group's recommendations as the foundation for future U.S. policy in Iraq.

Perhaps most notably the bill -- which is supported by several conservative Republicans -- aims to begin the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades by early 2008 if certain benchmarks are met.

"We really need a political situation in Washington, D.C., as we do in Baghdad," one of the authors of the bill, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., told ABC News. "I'm trying to give an option. I hope he regards this as a friendly gesture, something he can embrace after a few weeks."

Asked how much longer Republican senators would show patience with the president's surge strategy, Alexander said, "Not too much longer."

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