… but he got a non-answer.

(this post has been updated with more precise quotes based on an unofficial transcript of Coleman’s exchange with the witnesses, eb)

Coleman said that what the American people want and need and don’t have are “objective measures of progress” toward the U.S. goal in Iraq – military progress, governmental, either or both – that can be verified, that the administration is willing to be held to?

Coleman: “We need something more than just saying give us more time to come back in the fall.”

 Both Crocker and Petraeus gave long answers, but I didn’t hear either of them say yes, here is the best way to objectively measure progress, and if we can’t get this number down to this level in this time frame, we won’t come back and tell you that we’re making adequate progress. Details below the jump:

Sen. Norm Coleman (who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is taking today’s version of the Petraeus-Crocker report) just had his first five-minute turn. I don’t have transcript, but here are my hastily typed notes:

Coleman: You talk about it’s gonna take time, it’s gonna take time. But we know there will be setbacks ahead. More folks will pull out of the government. Al Qaida may be on the run, but they’re clearly not out.
They have the capability to commit massive violence.

So I’m asking for objective measures of progress. It’s fine to say the benchmarks aren’t it. But can we put on the table objective measures that we can look back at if things get shaky, so that we can tell whether we are still on the path to progress. 

He asked Crocker how to measure progress toward success toward power-sharing among Iraq’s ethnosectarian groups.

Then after telling Petraeus that he applauded the goals for troop drawdowns that Petraeus has already recommended, he asked for the same thing as applied to military progress. The U.S. Institute for Peace has recently said that the number of U.S. troops could be cut in half within three years and that the U.S. bases could be turned over the Iraqis within five years, Coleman said, then asked:

 ”So, General, is it — for you, can we get a longer term vision? Can we get a longer term plan? Can we say that, yes, we can be down to half our troops in three years? We can get to five years we can be turning over the bases and some other paradigm? But I think that we need something a little more than saying ‘give us more time to come back again in the fall.’ We need to see some plan out there.”

In reply, Crocker talked about what progress would look like to him, but gave nothing that could be measured. He wants to see signs that Baghdad and the provinces are cooperating better on reconstruction projects, signs that the ethnosectarian tensions are turning from a streetfight into a peaceful political competition. (Fine, but what’s the measurement and what’s the goal?)

He talked about evidence that the central government is making progress at taking apart the militias. (Good one. How will you objectively measure success and what’s an acceptable pace?) He applauded recent evidence that some Shia have started to reject the violence methods of the Mahdi Army as the Sunni have against Al Qaida in Iraq. (Fine. Measurement?) And lastly, he said he would like to see the “population displacement” (ethnic cleansing?) ending and beginning to reverse.

Petraeus mentioned that the charts he showed yesterday in the House showed reduction of U.S. troops below the pre-surge level of 130,000 (he called them “stair steps”), but he acknowledged that these further reductions were not attached to any time frame (”the timing is to be determined”).

Then he likewise said the goal is to shift the mission, “from leading to partnering to various forms of overwatch as we transition responsibilities to Iraqi forces” but again did not suggest a time frame nor a way to measure whether adequate progress was being made.

Is it possible they couldn’t understand what Coleman was asking or are they just determined never to commit to any definition of progress that can be measured and verified?

As far as I could tell, Coleman none of what he asked for. I’ll try to find out whether he saw it that way.