The Washington Post reports this morning that a GAO report, due out Tuesday, will find that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 15 of the 18 benchmarks that Congress and the Bush Administration had established to measure military and political progress.
It’s hard to escape politics, selective perception and confirmation bias when discussing the question of progress in Iraq, especially during the current run-up to the big September presentations by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
But if there’s anyone I would trust to call it straight, it would be the GAO.
The GAO (Government Accountability Office) ranks at top of the list of public agencies for its independence and non-partisanship. Its current leader, Comptroller General David Walker, is a former Reagan and Bush (senior) official who was nominated in 1998 as comptroller general by President Bill Clinton in 1998, confirmed unanimously by a Republican-controlled Senate and now in the middle of his 15-year term.
Walker, although he may be on the list of the 10 dullest men in America (just look at the mugshot above), is among my personal heroes because he is such a straight shooter and because he has been participating in a so-called “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour” to urge Americans to pay attention to the most under-discussed major issue by which we are undermining our children’s future, namely the government’s unsustainable fiscal course.
When I read a few weeks ago that the GAO was doing its own study of the Iraq situation (at the request of Congress) I counted on it to be the unbiased assessment available. When I just read the Post story, I was disappointed to learn that the GAO will only be studying the 18 benchmarks.
As I previously fulminated, for those focused on the big question of how things are going for the U.S. mission in Iraq, these benchmarks are overrated. The benchmarks focus only on things the Iraqi government is supposed to do to facilitate the much-ballyhooed but not very visible national reconciliation among the various population groups.
To believe that these benchmarks are the key to progress, you’d have to believe that if only the Iraqi parliament would pass the oil laws, redo the de-baathification arrangement, schedule elections, etc., the problems of Iraq would be on their way to solution. I’ll confess, I’m skeptical.
I’d be more impressed when the results are real in ways that affect the safety our troops and of the well being of the Iraqi people. For example, when the number of attacks on the troops is down, likewise the number of Americans and Iraqis getting killed, plus the unemployment rate in Iraq. I’ll be impressed by measurable progress toward the reconstruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, an increase in how much oil is being produced and how many hours a day Baghdad has electricity.
But for now, we have fresh findings, from the most credible agency, on the benchmarks, and, if the Post story is right, it won’t be a happy report.
How about you. What kinds of measures of progress would you find credible to back up the expected claim that the surge is working?
“I’d be more impressed when the results are real in ways that affect the safety our troops and of the well being of the Iraqi people. For example, when the number of attacks on the troops is down, likewise the number of Americans and Iraqis getting killed, plus the unemployment rate in Iraq. I’ll be impressed by measurable progress toward the reconstruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, an increase in how much oil is being produced and how many hours a day Baghdad has electricity.”
Agreed. When can we measure by that yardstick?
The anterior problem is figuring out how to get trustworthy data. Petraeus is being portrayed as an honest broker, but the evidence is accumulating that he’s cooking the books. One of the many things wrong with the Bush administration is that it’s a black hole of dishonesty that sucks everything into its vortex.
My impression is that the professional military learned a hell of a lot from the Vietnam War, not only about tactics, but also ethics. Civilian politicians by contrast apparently learned nothing. One of the many awful things that has happened in this war is losing that hard won knowledge, and under Bush tutoring the military is getting as stupid and dishonest as the administration.
Under the best of circumstances Iraq is a hard place to accumulate data, but it gets much worse when pentagon spokesmen say things that probably untrue or refuse to produce any evidence.