On March 15, 2006, members from both parties in Congress supported the creation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to review the situation on the ground and propose strategies for the way forward. For more than eight months, the Study Group met with military officers, regional experts, academics, journalists, and high-level government officials from America and abroad. Participants included George W. Bush and members of his cabinet; Bill Clinton; Jalal Talabani; Nouri Kamal al-Maliki; Generals John Abizaid, George Casey, and Anthony Zinni; Colin Powell; Thomas Friedman; George Packer; and many others. This official edition contains the Group's findings and proposals for improving security, strengthening the new government, rebuilding the economy and infrastructure, and maintaining stability in the region. It is a highly anticipated and essential step forward for Iraq, America, and the world.

James A. Baker, III ? Co-Chair
James A. Baker, III has served in senior government positions under three United States presidents. He served as the nation's 61st Secretary of State from January 1989 through August 1992 under President George H. W. Bush. During his tenure at the State Department, Mr. Baker traveled to 90 foreign countries as the United States confronted the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the post?Cold War era. Mr. Baker's reflections on those years of revolution, war, and peace?The Politics of Diplomacy?was published in 1995.

Mr. Baker served as the 67th Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. As Treasury Secretary, he was also Chairman of the President's Economic Policy Council. From 1981 to 1985, he served as White House Chief of Staff to President Reagan. Mr. Baker's record of public service began in 1975 as Under Secretary of Commerce to President Gerald Ford. It concluded with his service as White House Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to President Bush from August 1992 to January 1993.

Long active in American presidential politics, Mr. Baker led presidential campaigns for Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Bush over the course of five consecutive presidential elections from 1976 to 1992.

A native Houstonian, Mr. Baker graduated from Princeton University in 1952. After two years of active duty as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, he entered the University of Texas School of Law at Austin. He received his J.D. with honors in 1957 and practiced law with the Houston firm of Andrews and Kurth from 1957 to 1975.

Mr. Baker's memoir?Work Hard, Study . . . and Keep Out of Politics! Adventures and Lessons from an Unexpected Public Life?was published in October 2006.

Mr. Baker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 and has been the recipient of many other awards for distinguished public service, including Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award, the American Institute for Public Service's Jefferson Award, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Award, the Hans J. Morgenthau Award, the George F. Kennan Award, the Department of the Treasury's Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department of State's Distinguished Service Award, and numerous honorary academic degrees.

Mr. Baker is presently a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts. He is Honorary Chairman of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and serves on the board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 1997 to 2004, Mr. Baker served as the Personal Envoy of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to seek a political solution to the conflict over Western Sahara. In 2003, Mr. Baker was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for President George W. Bush on the issue of Iraqi debt. In 2005, he was co-chair, with former President Jimmy Carter, of the Commission on Federal Election Reform. Since March 2006, Mr. Baker and former U.S. Congressman Lee H. Hamilton have served as the co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan blue-ribbon panel on Iraq.

Mr. Baker was born in Houston, Texas, in 1930. He and his wife, the former Susan Garrett, currently reside in Houston, and have eight children and seventeen grandchildren.

Lee H. Hamilton ? Co-Chair
Lee H. Hamilton became Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in January 1999. Previously, Mr. Hamilton served for thirty-four years as a United States Congressman from Indiana. During his tenure, he served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (now the Committee on International Relations) and chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East from the early 1970s until 1993. He was Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran.

Also a leading figure on economic policy and congressional organization, he served as Chair of the Joint Economic Committee as well as the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, and was a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee. In his home state of Indiana, Mr. Hamilton worked hard to improve education, job training, and infrastructure. Currently, Mr. Hamilton serves as Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University, which seeks to educate citizens on the importance of Congress and on how Congress operates within our government.

Mr. Hamilton remains an important and active voice on matters of international relations and American national security. He served as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on National Security in the 21st Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission), was Co-Chair with former Senator Howard Baker of the Baker-Hamilton Commission to Investigate Certain Security Issues at Los Alamos, and was Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), which issued its report in July 2004. He is currently a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, as well as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Advisory Board.

Born in Daytona Beach, Florida, Mr. Hamilton relocated with his family to Tennessee and then to Evansville, Indiana. Mr. Hamilton is a graduate of DePauw University and the Indiana University School of Law, and studied for a year at Goethe University in Germany. Before his election to Congress, he practiced law in Chicago and in Columbus, Indiana. A former high school and college basketball star, he has been inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Mr. Hamilton's distinguished service in government has been honored through numerous awards in public service and human rights as well as honorary degrees. He is the author of A Creative Tension?The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress (2002) and How Congress Works and Why You Should Care (2004), and the coauthor of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (2006).

Lee and his wife, the former Nancy Ann Nelson, have three children?Tracy Lynn Souza, Deborah Hamilton Kremer, and Douglas Nelson Hamilton?and five grandchildren: Christina, Maria, McLouis and Patricia Souza and Lina Ying Kremer.

Lawrence S. Eagleburger ? Member
Lawrence S. Eagleburger was sworn in as the 62nd U.S. Secretary of State by President George H. W. Bush on December 8, 1992, and as Deputy Secretary of State on March 20, 1989.

After his entry into the Foreign Service in 1957, Mr. Eagleburger served in the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, and the U.S. Mission to NATO in Belgium. In 1963, after a severe earthquake in Macedonia, he led the U.S. government effort to provide medical and other assistance. He was then assigne…