LibriumArcana.Games

Iraq has managed to reach only three out of 18 progress benchmarks set by the US, a draft of a key report seen by the Washington Post newspaper says.

The reported findings of the Government Accountability Office - a Congressional watchdog - contrast with a White House study saying eight goals have been met.

The targets were established to monitor Iraq's military and political progress.

"Key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high," is the report's bald assessment, the Post says.

The final 69-page report, which will be delivered to Congress on Tuesday next week, says a further two benchmarks have been "partially met".


While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, US agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced
GAO report, as quoted by Washington Post

Iraq benchmarks

According to the Washington Post, the official who provided them with the draft feared its "pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version - as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq".

The National Intelligence Estimate, the collective analysis of the situation in Iraq by 16 intelligence agencies which was declassified last week, cast fresh doubt about the ability of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to bring about political unity in Iraq.

However, it did say that there had been "measurable but uneven improvements" in Iraq's security since January, following the recent surge in US troop numbers.

Withdrawal timetable

The Government Accountability Office report comes just weeks before General David Petraeus, head of US forces in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, are due to deliver a full progress report to Congress, looking in particular at the effect of the surge.

Gen Petraeus
All eyes will be on Gen Petraeus when he reports in September
"While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, US agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," the Post quoted the watchdogs as saying.

The pessimistic assessment from the respected Congressional watchdog comes as a new study by a US think-tank says the US could safely withdraw most of its troops from Iraq within a year.

The study by the left-leaning Center for American Progress argues that the Pentagon should be planning for a 12-month deadline now.

President George W Bush says he will be guided by the advice of his generals and according to the BBC's Nick Childs in Washington the widespread assumption has been that the views of Gen Petraeus will be key.

Intense debate

However, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, has said he does not believe that the much-heralded report next month will provide any "magical solutions" to the challenges facing Iraq.

Mr Zebari acknowledged that the Petraeus-Crocker report would be very important and that the world was awaiting it anxiously, yet he was also clearly keen to caution against exaggerated expectations.

He accepted that in the past progress on the security front in Iraq had not been matched by political progress, but insisted that the degree of consensus reached by Shia, Kurdish and Sunni leaders last weekend, when they agreed a unity accord, meant a new phase was beginning.

Our correspondent in Washington says nobody disputes that next month will be critical for the current US surge strategy in Iraq and the debate in Washington is intensifying accordingly.

Perhaps to keep options open, our correspondent says, or as a sign that there may be differences among the US top brass, the Pentagon has now made it clear that Mr Bush will be hearing from a variety of top generals, including members of the joint chiefs of staff who were said to be ambivalent about the surge strategy in the first place.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Stung by the bleak findings of a congressional audit of progress in Iraq, the Pentagon has asked that some of the negative assessments be revised, a military spokesman said Thursday.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said that after reviewing a draft of the Government Accountability Office report - which has not yet been made public - policy officials ``made some factual corrections'' and ``offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades'' assigned by the GAO.

The Associated Press has learned that the GAO report will conclude that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks set to judge the Iraqi government's performance in the political and security arenas haven't been met.

``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,''' Morrell said. He declined to elaborate or to spell out which of the benchmark grades the Pentagon was disputing.

At the White House, officials argued that the GAO report, which was required by legislation President Bush signed last spring, was unrealistic because it assigned ``pass or fail'' grades to each benchmark, rather than assessing whether the Iraqis have made progress toward reaching the benchmark goals.

``A bar was set so high, that it was almost not to be able to be met,'' White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. ``On the other hand, one of the things it does not take into account, which is not on the benchmark list, is the cooperation of the Sunni tribes, who have decided to fight back against al-Qaida.''

The administration said it agreed that Iraq had not reached the objectives.

``I think we have said they have not met the benchmarks,'' Perino said. ``I don't see how it would be news for them to come out today and say they have not met benchmarks. We have said that.''

By Sept. 15 President Bush is to give a detailed accounting of the situation in Iraq.

The GAO was to give lawmakers a classified briefing about its findings on Thursday. It is not yet clear when the GAO's unclassified report will be released, but it is due Saturday amid a series of assessments called for in January legislation that authorized Bush's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq, where there is now a total of more than 160,000.

Among those Bush will hear from are the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Defense Secretary Robert Gates; the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus; and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. On Wednesday, the Pentagon said Bush was likely to get a variety of views from different military officials. Bush will then deliver his own report to Congress by Sept. 15.

The GAO report comes at a pivotal time in the Iraq debate. So far, Republicans have mostly stood by Bush on the war and staved off Democratic demands of troop withdrawals. But in exchange for their support, many GOP members said they wanted to see substantial progress in Iraq by September or else they would call for a new strategy, including possibly a withdrawal of troops.

Democrats are expected this fall to push for another round of votes on their legislation ordering most troops out by spring. A likely target for the debate will be a $147 billion bill the military needs to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The money covers the 2007 budget year, which begins Oct. 1.

The GAO, the congressional watchdog, is expected to find that the Iraqis have met only modest security goals for Baghdad and none of the major political aims such as passage of an oil law.

The White House declined to comment on the specific findings of the GAO report, which one official said would put the Iraqi government's success rate at about 20 percent.

``While we've seen progress in some areas, it would not surprise me that the GAO would make this assessment given the difficult congressionally mandated measurement they had to follow,'' said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council.

An internal White House memorandum, prepared to respond to the GAO findings, says the report will claim the Iraqis have failed on at least 13 benchmarks. It also says the criteria lawmakers set for the report allow no room to report progress, only absolute success or failure.

The memo argues that the GAO will not present a ``true picture'' of the situation in Iraq because the standards were ``designed to lock in failure,'' according to portions of the document read to the AP by an official who has seen it.

By contrast, the memo says, a July interim report on the surge called for the administration to report on ``progress'' made toward reaching the wide-ranging benchmarks.

The July report said the administration believed the Iraqis had made satisfactory progress on eight of the 13 benchmarks. It graded six as unsatisfactory and said two were mixed. It said it was too early to judge the remaining two.

The GAO, however, has been told to ``assess whether or not such benchmarks have been met,'' and the administration plans to assert that is too tough a standard to be met at this point in the surge, the officials said.

``It's pretty clear that if that's your measurement standard a majority of the benchmarks would be determined not to have been met,'' said one official. ``A lot of them are multipart and so, even if 90 percent of it is done, it's still a failure.''

Morrell said Bush's top military advisers, including Gates, would give the president their opinions ``directly and in an unvarnished way.''

``The objective ... is not to reach consensus,'' he said. ``That may be the end result, but that's not what he (Gates) is looking for. He is looking for a way to sort of make sure that the normal bureaucratic massaging that sometimes eliminates the rough edges or the sharp differences between individuals does not victimize this process, so that the president can get distinct - if that's the way it turns out to be - points of view on where we are and where we need to go.''