The Daily Background

Obviously Thursday’s big news (sorry Fred Thompson) is that the GAO (or Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan Congressional branch) was so afraid that the White House was going to politically doctor their upcoming September report that high-level officials pre-emptively leaked it to the Washington Post (this was the specific reason unnamed officials gave for handing a near-final version of the report to Post reporters Thomas E. Ricks Karen DeYoung). And with good reason: the report is being calling strikingly negative. Congress will get the final draft on Tuesday, but here’s a preview:

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.
[…]
The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. “While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced,” it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that “the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved.”

Stop right there. Reducing violence was only half of the surge’s goal. The other half– the key half– was that the reduction in violence needed to accommodate a significant political turnaround and reconciliation in Baghdad. That hasn’t happened at all, and the first half (the violence reduction) seems debatable, depending on where you look.

More: “Prospects for additional progress in enacting legislative benchmarks have been complicated by the withdrawal of 15 of 37 members of the Iraqi cabinet… this boycott ends any claim by the Shi’ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity.”

The report says that “Overall key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds,” as they had apparently promised to do. Additionally, the report suggests that the White House’s reports “would be more useful” if they provided, uh, some kind of proof of their perennial assessments that Iraq is turning the corner. Further:

It contradicts the Bush administration’s conclusion in July that sectarian violence was decreasing as a result of the U.S. military’s stepped-up operations in Baghdad this year. “The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July,” the GAO draft states.

Iraqi security forces are also assessed more severely in the GAO study than in the administration’s July report. Although the White House found satisfactory progress toward the goal of deploying three Iraqi army brigades in Baghdad, the GAO disagrees, citing “performance problems” in some units. “Some army units sent to Baghdad have mixed loyalties, and some have had ties to Shiia militias making it difficult to target Shiia extremist networks,” it says.

The GAO draft also says that the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating independently declined from 10 in March to six last month. The July White House report mentioned a “slight” decline in capable Iraqi units, without providing any numbers. The GAO also says, as did the White House in July, that the Iraqi government has intervened in military activities for political reasons, “resulting in some operations being based on sectarian interests.” But its discussion of Iraqi security forces is often veiled, as when it states that the determination that the security forces benchmark was not met “was based largely on classified information.”

In short (well, too late for that), the GAO is saying that the Administration has been spinning through their teeth about Iraq pretty much this entire year and that some of the benchmarks that they say have been met haven’t really been met, and that really the Iraqi government is totally infantile (which those of us who have been paying attention already knew anyways). It’s not new, but at least it’s official.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog