After reporting to the White House and Congress last year, members of the Iraq Study Group, like all great super-groups, went their separate ways. After the president largely ignored its recommendations, the ISG pondered a reunion tour, but the White House reportedly intervened, imploring former Secretary of State James Baker not to reconvene the panel.

So, the U.S. Institute of Peace did the next best thing -- it convened the experts who advised the ISG, which led to a summer-long discussion among some two dozen former U.S. officials and ambassadors, former CIA analysts, and Iraq specialists from think tanks and universities. Their recommendations are poised to be released tomorrow.

In a report to be released Sunday, a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Institute of Peace calls for a 50 percent reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq within three years and a total withdrawal and handover of security to the Iraqi military in five years.

"The United States faces too many challenges around the world to continue its current level of effort in Iraq, or even the deployment that was in place before the surge," the report says. " . . . It is time to chart a clearer path forward."

Given that Petraeus reportedly believes stability can be achieved in 10 years, and the Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Biddle is talking about 20 years, I suppose the USIP plan for a mere five years might look appealing by comparison.

That is, if we had any reason to think conditions would be any better in 2012 than they are now.