WASHINGTON - As the US Congress prepares for a critical September assessment of
progress in Iraq, a draft of an upcoming report by Congress's non-partisan
investigative arm states that Iraq has met only three of 18 congressionally
mandated benchmarks for progress, in contrast to an earlier White House report
claiming "satisfactory" progress on eight of the benchmarks.
A draft of the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was leaked
to the Washington Post by an official "who feared that its pessimistic
conclusions would be watered down"
by the Department of Defense and other government agencies prior to the release
of the final report, the Post reported on Thursday.
Indeed, Pentagon officials and prominent Iraq hawks were quick to attack the
validity of the draft, saying that it held progress in Iraq to an unreasonably
high standard.
The release of the GAO's pessimistic assessment comes as a critical time in the
Iraq debate, as administration officials including General David Petraeus, the
top US commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador to Iraq, are due to
report to Congress in mid-September on the progress of the war.
Congressional legislation in May established 18 benchmarks for military and
political progress in Iraq, and a White House assessment in July was relatively
upbeat, reporting "satisfactory" progress on eight of the benchmarks and
"mixed" progress on two more.
The GAO report was more pessimistic, claiming that only three of the benchmarks
had been met: creation of committees in support of the Baghdad security plan,
establishment of joint security stations in Baghdad, and ensuring the rights of
minority parties in the Iraqi legislature.
In several areas where the White House had reported satisfactory progress, the
GAO claimed that benchmarks had been unmet or only partially met. These
included allocating and spending US$10 billion for reconstruction projects,
providing three effective Iraqi brigades to support US military operations, and
reviewing changes to the Iraqi constitution.
The draft concluded that "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains
high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in
reconstruction funds". It also offered an implicit rebuke to earlier
assessments by the George W Bush administration, claiming that they "would be
more useful" if they provided more details to support their claims and more
data on violence in Iraq.
The final version of the report will be released on Tuesday, and the draft is
still being reviewed by the Pentagon and other relevant agencies. The leaking
of the document to the Washington Post is a sign that officials involved in the
report's preparation are worried that its negative assessments will be toned
down during the review process.
Bush administration officials played down the importance of the GAO report,
saying that it failed to account for some data and used an unreasonably high
standard to assess progress.
"We have provided the GAO with information which we believe will lead them to
conclude that a few of the benchmark grades should be upgraded from 'not met'
to 'met'," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said on Thursday.
Critics of the report also claimed that differences between the GAO and White
House assessments were largely the result of different standards of evaluation.
While the White House evaluated whether the rate of progress toward the
benchmarks was "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory", the GAO measured whether
benchmarks had actually been "met" or "unmet".
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and a prominent Iraq hawk, wrote
an article in the magazine calling the release of the draft "a pathetic
preemptive strike" by Congress and the Washington Post. He wrote that
evaluating whether benchmarks had already been met was a "ridiculous standard"
because "no one ever promised or expected that the Iraqis would have met the
benchmarks by now".
The report did not, however, simply classify benchmarks as either met or unmet.
It also classified some as "partially met", thereby allowing the GAO to
recognize progress that fell short of reaching benchmarks.
The draft found "partially met" benchmarks in only two areas: enacting
legislation to form semi-autonomous regions and spending the $10 billion in
reconstruction money.
The release of the GAO report is likely to increase congressional criticism of
President Bush's "surge" strategy for Iraq. Many analysts expect a showdown
when Petraeus and Crocker report to Congress in mid-September. Although the
administration has claimed that the surge has led to an improvement in the
security situation on the ground, this claim has repeatedly been called into
question.
The GAO report noted that attacks on US forces have decreased, but also that
attacks against on Iraqi civilians have remained unchanged, and that "US
agencies differ on whether such [sectarian] violence has been reduced".
And last Sunday, the Associated Press reported that the rate of deaths from
sectarian attacks has almost doubled in 2007. AP found that war-related deaths
in Iraq have averaged at least 62 per day so far this year, compared with 33
per day in 2006.
On the political front, signs of reconciliation have been few and far between.
Last Sunday, several prominent Iraqi leaders announced a deal that would let
some members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party back into the government, an
issue that has been a key point of contention between Sunni and Shi'ite
factions. But many experts doubted that the deal would lead to any real
political progress.
"This agreement was likely produced for the sole purpose of giving Ryan Crocker
something to bring back to Congress," wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at
George Washington University. "But it doesn't actually solve anything: [Sunni
leader Tareq al-]Hashemi has made very clear that he has no intention of
rejoining [Prime Minister Nuri al-]Maliki's government, the agreements exist
only on paper at this point, and nothing has been done about the deeply
sectarian nature of what passes for the Iraqi state."
While Democrats say they are determined to enact legislation that would force
the Bush administration to begin withdrawing troops as early as the end of this
year, most political analysts here feel that they will not succeed in achieving
a veto-proof majority.
In fact, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the administration
plans to request an extra $50 billion of funding for the war from Congress next
month; the money would come in addition to a $460 billion defense budget for
2008 and a $147 billion defense supplemental bill for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
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