Congressional auditors see little progress on Iraq goals
US: Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi
government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and
military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President George W.
Bush's Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned.
The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at
least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure progress in the rush into Iraq
of increased numbers of U.S. troops are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15
deadline for Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight
months after he announced the policy, according to three officials
familiar with the matter.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report
is not yet public, also said the administration is preparing a case to
downplay its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to used
unfair, "all or nothing" standards when compiling the document.
The GAO is to give a classified briefing about its findings to
lawmakers on Thursday. It is not yet clear when its unclassified report
will be released, but it is due Sept. 1 amid a series of assessments
called for in January legislation that authorized Bush's plan to send
30,000 more troops to Iraq. The Americans already have more than 160,000
in-country.
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. The
Pentagon said Wednesday Bush probably would get a variety of views from
different military officials. Bush then will deliver his own report to
Congress by Sept. 15.
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 would not comment on 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 of the 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 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 18
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 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."
At the Pentagon, spokesman Geoff Morrell previewed the
administration's response to the GAO report, comparing it unfavorably to
the July findings. "The standard the GAO has set is far more stringent,"
he told reporters. "Some might argue it's impossible to meet."
Morrell said Bush's top military advisers, including Gates, would
give the president their opinions "directly and in an unvarnished way."
Washington, Thursday, AP |
