Just now breaking and it is definitely going to send shockwaves around D.C.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

This sounds an awful lot like what Democrats have been getting at. Prove to Iraq we are done and force them to step up. Of course Bush already said this week he would not go this route:

Mr. Bush has rejected such contacts until now, and he has also rejected withdrawal, declaring in Riga, Latvia, on Tuesday that while he will show flexibility, “there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

Thanks Bush for providing more fuel for the Democrats next year when they take over and Biden holds his hearings on Iraq. I am sure we will see more Republicans switching over to our side on this, because if they stick with Bush then 2008 will become another Iraq election year. Of course the Democrats hands are somewhat tied and their only real course they could end up taken are either impeachment or de-funding of the war.  I am for the first option and I firmly believe the political fallout of that will be far less severe than cutting off funding.