The group comprised five Republicans and five Democrats and was co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.

JOINT COOPERATION

The members made clear their belief that the Bush administration's Iraq policy is failing. They said they hoped the report would prove a catalyst to new bipartisanship on Iraq following years of acrimony in U.S. politics, and that it would help bring consensus to the American people.

Whether that can be achieved is uncertain. Democrats on Capitol Hill welcomed the report but said the onus is on Bush to implement the recommendations. For his part, Bush thanked the Iraq Study Group and described the report as "an opportunity to find common ground." But he offered no immediate endorsement or rejection of any of its recommendations.

As they unveiled the report at a Capitol Hill news conference, Baker and Hamilton warned that success in Iraq is not guaranteed even if each of their 79 recommendations were adopted by Congress and the administration.

"There is no magic formula that will solve the problems of Iraq," Baker said. "But to give the Iraqi government a chance to succeed, United States policy must be focused more broadly than on military strategy alone or on Iraq alone. It must seek the active and constructive engagement of all governments that have an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq."

Hamilton said the situation in Iraq was very grave. "We do not know if it can be turned around, but we think we have an obligation to try, and if the recommendations that we have made are effectively implemented, there is at least a chance that you can see established a stable government in Iraq."

Except for the recommendations on Iran and Syria, the panel appeared to steer away from language that might inflame the Bush administration, which has said it will consider the Baker-Hamilton report as part of its own review of strategy and tactics in Iraq. The panel did not, for instance, set a formal timetable for troop withdrawal, setting a goal of 2008 for the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades based on an estimate by U.S. commanders for when Iraqi forces will be ready to take over security needs.

But in language and tone, the 96-page report offered a strikingly different assessment of the U.S. mission in Iraq than has been heard until recently from the White House. There was no mention of the goal of establishing democracy, and no discussion of "victory" or the centrality of Iraq in "the war on terror" — all staples of Bush rhetoric in recent years.

While the group stressed it did not look backward at the mistakes in Iraq — "how the house got on fire," in the words of panel member Vernon Jordan, a Democrat — it offered scathing assessments of the competence of the Iraqi government, the accuracy of U.S. intelligence reporting on the insurgency, the lack of coordination of economic assistance and many other issues. The panel took a veiled shot at outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying that the new Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, should create "an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice" to the president and other civilian leaders.

POLICY RE-EVALUATION

Coming from a group comprised in part by five stalwarts of the Republican establishment — including former Attorney General Ed Meese, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Baker himself, a longtime associate of former President George H.W. Bush — the sober report seemed likely to accelerate the re-evaluation of Iraq policy now being considered by Congress and the administration, according to lawmakers and others involved in policymaking. But experts inside and outside the government voiced some skepticism that the recommendations themselves amounted to a coherent strategy that would accomplish the goal of stabilizing Iraq and reducing the U.S. military presence.

Congressional Democrats embraced the report's call for a change in tactics in Iraq, and Republicans — with at least one notable exception in presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — generally praised the report as well. But in a sign of the potential roadblocks ahead, Democratic aides said privately that Democrats want to make it clear that Bush still "owns" the Iraq war, and if the ISG's recommendations fail, they want the blame to fall on Bush, not them.

"The president has the ball in his court now," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

McCain offered a toughly worded statement, questioning the utility of reaching out to Syria and Iran and saying the link between an Arab-Israeli peace initiative and violence in Iraq "seems tenuous at best."

The Washington Post and The Associated Press contributed to this report.