With the White House facing a pivotal week for Iraq policy, the big question is not so much what the bipartisan Iraq Study Group will say when it releases its report Wednesday, but how President Bush will respond.

In the final two years of his tenure and well aware that Iraq more than anything will define his place in history, Mr. Bush is facing intense pressure to make extensive adjustments to save a project that most experts conclude is rapidly failing.

At the same time, recent insistence by the president that his policies will yet succeed suggest that Bush will resist recommendations that do not mesh with his vision for Iraq.

"This president doesn't like to backtrack – but then sometimes he does," says Jon Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "He sees his legacy as showing resolve, and that is going to influence any decisions [on Iraq] as much as the enormous pressure he is under to change course."

For example: the study group is expected to recommend a significant drawdown of the 144,000 US troops in Iraq over the coming year, even if Iraqi forces are not up to replacing them. That proposal "simply has no realism to it," Bush said last week. But another anticipated proposal, for substantially increased training of Iraqi security forces, is more likely to receive a presidential nod.

Much has been revealed in recent days suggesting the congressionally commissioned Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, will recommend a direction that's neither "stay the course" nor "cut and run." Recommendations are expected to include measures for using future US troop levels as leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to make hard political decisions – on disbanding militias, for example, or accommodating Sunnis.

At the same time, the Baker commission is expected to favor intensifying and broadening regional diplomatic efforts to help pull Iraq back from the brink of full-blown civil war. That recommendation is expected to include opening dialogue with objectionable but influential neighbors in the region, especially Iran and Syria.

The administration has been dropping hints that a major adjustment is forthcoming in US Iraq policy. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, said Sunday that the president would unveil a "new way forward" in coming weeks that will include "significant changes."

But Bush is also acting to put the public on notice that any changes will be what he determines is best, based on the full panoply of recommendations he is receiving.

Bush and various aides have repeated recently that the Baker commission's report is just one of a number that the president will be receiving over the coming days on how to proceed in Iraq.

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