New Iraq report: 15 of 18 benchmarks satisfactory 

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91L960O0&show_article=1

WASHINGTON (AP) - No matter who is elected president in November, his foreign policy team will have to deal with one of the most frustrating realities in Iraq: the slow pace with which the government in Baghdad operates.
Iraq's political and military success is considered vital to U.S. interests, whether troops stay or go. And while the Iraqi government has made measurable progress in recent months, the pace at which it's done so has been achingly slow.

The White House sees the progress in a particularly positive light, declaring in a new assessment to Congress that Iraq's efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are "satisfactory"—almost twice of what it determined to be the case a year ago. The May 2008 report card, obtained by the Associated Press, determines that only two of the benchmarks—enacting and implementing laws to disarm militias and distribute oil revenues—are unsatisfactory.

In the past 12 months, since the White House released its first formal assessment of Iraq's military and political progress, Baghdad politicians have reached several new agreements seen as critical to easing sectarian tensions.

They have passed, for example, legislation that grants amnesty for some prisoners and allows former members of Saddam Hussein's political party to recover lost jobs or pensions. They also determined that provincial elections would be held by Oct. 1.

But for every small step forward, Iraq has several more giant steps to take before victory can be declared on any one issue.

Amnesty requests are backlogged, and in question is whether the new law will speed the release of those in U.S. custody. It also remains unclear just how many former Baath members will be able to return to their jobs. And while Oct. 1 had been identified as an election day, Baghdad hasn't been able to agree on the rules, possibly delaying the event by several weeks.

Likewise, militias and sectarian interests among Iraq's leaders still play a central role in the conflict. And U.S. military officials say they are unsure violence levels will stay down as troop levels return to 142,000 after a major buildup last year.

In the May progress report, one benchmark was deemed to have brought mixed results. The Iraqi army has made satisfactory progress on the goal of fairly enforcing the law, while the nation's police force remains plagued by sectarianism, according to the administration assessment.

Overall, militia control has declined and Baghdad's security forces have "demonstrated its willingness and effectiveness to use these authorities to pursue extremists in all provinces, regardless of population or extremist demographics," as illustrated by recent operations, the White House concludes.

Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who requested the administration's updated assessment, scoffed at the May report, which he says uses the false standard of determining whether progress on a goal is "satisfactory" versus whether the benchmark has been met. He estimates that only a few of the 18 benchmarks have been fully achieved.

Democrats also say more solid progress could have been made had the administration starting pulling troops out sooner.

"We've tried repeatedly to get the administration to shift responsibility to the Iraqi leaders for their own future, since there is broad consensus that there is no military solution and only a political settlement among the Iraqis can end the conflict," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"The administration, however, has repeatedly missed opportunities to shift this burden to the Iraqis and appears willing to do so again," Levin said.

But whether the next president will be much more successful in forcing the Iraqi government to reach a lasting political settlement remains to be seen.

Whether the new administration starts pulling troops out of Iraq right away, as Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama has promised, or refuses to set a timetable, per Republican John McCain's suggestion, most agree that a functional democracy in Iraq could still be years away because of the complexities of the issues involved and the deeply rooted distrust among the nation's sectarian groups.

"Iraq has the potential to develop into a stable, secure multiethnic, multi-sectarian democracy under the rule of law," Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq said in April when he last testified before Congress. "Whether it realizes that potential is ultimately up to the Iraqi people."
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Democrats and liberals have hitched their wagons to failure in Iraq any shred of good news in iraq is bad for them.

With us slowly seeing success in iraq notice they have dropped it as a campaign issue and now are moving to focus more and more on Afganistan/Pakistan...

God forbid Osama gets whacked in the coming months.... Liberals and Democrats may shit themselves.. heh

The shift in focus wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the Taliban have grown so strong that it is actually threatening the major Pakistani city of Peshawar, would it?

Or the fact that the entirely unnecessary and unwarranted diversion (catastrophe) in Iraq is largely to blame for Afghanistan spiraling out of control?

As for the effect of progress in Iraq will have on the election, I think it will be minimal. I think the Democrats have a lock on this election. I think the party is going to sweep the floor with the Republicans. Mostly my conviction stems from our grim economic situation. That's going to kill the Republicans in November, not Iraq. But even with progress in Iraq, there is still a huge lingering disgust held by Americans over how the Iraq war was so dishonestly sold to us, and how incompetently the occupation was managed. Making some painful progress now will do little to assuage the bitter taste in Americans' mouths. Also important, but less so that what I've already mentioned, is the Republicans' general incompetence, like Katrina, and dragging our nation's honor through the mud by encouraging torture, treating our allies shabbily, and refusing to be a responsible global partner with regards to global warming. The Republican brand is itself in tatters, as Americans turned away from gruesome spectacles such as the Republicans so shamelessly and transparently using Terri Sheivo as a political stunt, while slashing taxes for themselves and their rich friends while our national debt soared.

At a personal level, my wife works with the Army ROTC unit at a local university. I attend a number of functions with her, including the annual graduation ceremony where the cadets are launched into careers as officers. In addition to the cadets, I speak with the officers in the unit a lot, almost all of which have had multiple tours in Iraq. I'm a former Navy officer myself, though fortunately I was never in a war. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars are quite real to me, probably more so than most citizens who are not actually serving. It's not just an abstract policy debate.

I welcome success and a diminished rate of violence in Iraq for the sake of our nation, our troops, and the Iraqis people.

What wonderful news Bonzonite has brought us today! The U.S. has succeeded in solving a political problem in a foreign country with military might!
 Surely with this good news and this level of success Bonzonite will have to agree that we are no longer needed in Iraq.   He would have to agree that we can pull out our troops and the new government can stand on its own... We have hit almost all of the benchmarks!...We can declare "mission accomplished (again) and wish them well as we bring all the troops  home...right??  The quagmire has ended right?
 Bonzo?... Am I right Bonzo?... Don't you have to agree?

You mean "gradual and responsible" reductions.....right neue?   

Unfortunatly yes. They've created a situation where the current admin 'wins' if anything comes about in Iraq other than a recreation of the final days of Vietnam. This was a mistake on their part because now the definition of 'success' is wide open for interpretation. Truth is it's way too late to call this a 'success' based on the original idea.

-The US was not welcomed with open arms.

-Assigning 22-year old post grads who had never left the country for positions like minister of the interior, etc. was NOT a good idea. It was beyond stupid actually and well within the bounds of completely delusional.
 
-Abu Garib was NOT a success and probably cost the US many lives and helped promote the rise of al Qaeda and overall anti-Coalition violence incredibly. Put bluntly: You can gaurentee that many coalition solders are dead now who would still be alive if it weren't for Abu Garib. There is no measurement for that kind of damage.

After all, any civil war or ethnic conflict will peter out eventually, so hanging around until that happens is not a success but rather serendipity.

Benchmarks or not; silly word games or not; the admin is still responsible for promoting the idea that Iraq was connected to 9/11 and al Qaeda.
--- (yes they did -- you people who are going to come here to dispute this are crazy or game players. One minute you'll deny the admin worked hard to promote this false idea, then the next minute you'll be digging up obscure intel reports that essentially mean nothing in an attempt to justify promoting the idea as true and not false. IOW you don't know whether to disagree and 'prove' the Admin "didn't" promote a false story or to try and back it up as the liegitimate story. They lied. Period.)


Meanwhile 15 of 18 is still a fail, this isn't a high school test, they are benchmarks and all benchmarks ne3ed to be met or it's a fail. yet because the democrats have cosistantly warned about future distaster the present disaster has been forgotten.
Remember the surge did not come about because of Iraq 'success'.
It's kind of like being warned against playing craps because you'll loose all you money. So you lose everything but $10 and then start a 'winning streak' of 2-3 rolls and say, "See? Told you I'd win.". You didn't win. If you break even you'll be lucky because there is nothing to gaurentee you Iraq won't be a terrorism hotbed in 10-20 years instead of a 'we-love-Americans' democracy.
You lost a lot of ground and when you finally got rid of Rumsfeld and kept your delusional Republican noses out of it and let the Generals do what they do best and stayed out of their way all of a sudden you start seing some 'success' (although 'less disaster' would be more accurate). But it's not a 'success' and if anything it proves the Admins original day-dream approach to Iraq as false.


I also find it interesting the article does not tell us exactly what benchmarks have 'succeeded'. If I'm wwrong about that please point it out.



Ahk

Who could have forseen the Iraq invasion with too few troops and no plan to secure stockpiles of small arms in the rush to find non-existent WMDs could turn out badly?

Besides thinkers, liberals, soldiers, generals and such?

I kinda enjoy seeing the dems and liberals here try to not say "good job" and insetad work hard to turn good news into bad.