“On December 6 [2006], [President] Bush and [Vice President Dick] Cheney hosted the Iraq Study Group [ISG], a bipartisan collection of elder statesmen assigned by Congress to recommend a way forward in the war. …’The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating,’ read the first line of the group’s report. The report outlined a path to what [ISG Co-chairman Lee] Hamilton would later call ‘a responsible exit.’ It recommended opening a new dialogue with Iran and Syria, intensifying Middle East peace efforts, and, most critically, withdrawing all combat forces from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008.”
– Peter Baker, Days of Fire, Page 513