Speaking of that GAO report, a draft version was leaked to the Washington Post, and it, naturally, found that "all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress."

What is not mentioned in the Post article is that the report was written in March, just two months after the surge started, not in August.

No surprise, considering it comes from the Congressional investigative arm. The GAO didn't even attempt to hide it's motive:

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that 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.
What the Post calls "watering down" is what everyone else on the planet calls a peer review. They'd much rather some politicos in the GAO be allowed to write a report without challenge. That's how the global warming scientists do it, so why not Congress, eh?

Well, the Pentagon is reportedly already correcting apparent "factual" errors made by the GAO.

Columnist Bill Kristol additionally adds, "If this is the best war opponents have to offer, the administration is in amazingly good shape going into September."

For the report from the White House, Congress asked the administration to detail if the Iraqis are making "sufficient progress." But Congress asked the GAO, by contrast, to report if the Iraqis had "completed" the benchmarks. This ridiculous standard was a Congressional trap that forced the GAO to waste time and taxpayer money to come out with a pre-ordained and meaningless judgment, since no one ever promised or expected that the Iraqis would have met the benchmarks by now. And the GAO report doesn't really shed light on the key question: Are the Iraqis making progress?

And what are the benchmarks that Congress set up? Do they include criteria that matter? No. Grassroots political progress? Not in the GAO report. The turn of the Sunnis against the insurgency? Not in the GAO report. The stabilization of Anbar province? Not in the GAO report. And progress against al Qaeda--the single most vital and direct American national interest in Iraq? Not in the GAO report.

The benchmarks they do use are often absurd. To take one example: "Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently." This is particularly silly. No one expected that Iraqi military units would surpass the capabilities of our NATO allies, most of which are also unable to operate fully "independently" of the American military. The question, again, is whether the Iraqi Security Forces are improving. Here the GAO's portrayal of Iraqi forces as having made no progress, at least as reported in the Post, is contradicted by mounds of evidence from knowledgeable observers.
I highlighted that very relevant point above.

On the flip side, you'll find that Democrats may not focus so much on the security progress as they will the political progress.

But as Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee Thad McCotter pointed out -- it's not relevant.

Consequently, the true measure of political progress in Iraq is NOT found in its national Parliament; the true measure of political progress in Iraq is occurring in local tribes, towns and provinces where Iraqis are choosing liberty instead of the insurgency.

This Iraqi “election for freedom” is not an intrinsically military development. It is fundamentally a political development complementing and speeding military progress; and hastening the day such individual and local “grassroots” political wins collectively dictate political progress in Baghdad.
Exactly right. Parliamentary democracies aren't build from the top down, but from the local governments up. The 13 colonies Iraq ain't. But if we secure the local authorities who are friendly to the US troops and more frequently opposing al Qaeda (i.e., remember the regional strong horse/weak horse mindset) we have an opportunity to get Iraq closer to the Western way.

Japan. Germany. South Korea. These weren't liberal democracies the day after their corresponding wars ended. It took decades of blood, sweat and tears.

Labels: capitulation, democrats, GAO, Iraq, Petraeus

Democrats are justifiably fearful that General David Petraeus is all he's advertised to be, and maybe more. We'll see, I guess, on September 15, when Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testify before Congress on the military and political progress in Iraq due to the surge enacted six months ago.

One supposes Petraeus could blow it.

But the true measure of what to expect from Petraeus is by reading the Democrats.

Since the day the surge was announced Democrats advocated pessimism and some - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - even preemptively declared defeat.

As previous posts show here and here, the Democrat strategy was to simply ignore Petraeus or instead focus on alternative reports, such as the one the Government Accountability Office (GAO) leaked this week to the Washington Post ahead of schedule.

But Democrats are beginning to realize that not only can they not ignore the progress in Iraq, but they have underestimated Petraeus.

Democrats fancied themselves brilliant for their demands that Petraeus come before Congress. Surely he's no match for we veteran politicians! Now the Democrats appear weary that Petraeus' political skill may match his military leadership.

"Terrorism Policies Split Democrats," reads a Wash. Post, Aug. 30, headline.

A week before the very liberal Democratic Congressman Brian Baird (D-3 Vancouver, Wa.), who voted against the Iraq War, recently penned a Seattle Times op-ed urging fellow Democrats to give our troops more time. His editorial epitomizes the Democrat's dilemma -- they overplayed their hand. "The answer is that the people, strategies and facts on the ground have changed for the better and those changes justify changing our position on what should be done," wrote Baird.

Why Even Harry Reid himself is backing down from previous troop withdraws in an attempt to court antiwar Republicans.

Could Petraeus falter before Congress? Sure. But were that expected the Democrats wouldn't be fighting amongst themselves so much now.

Labels: capitulation, democrats, GAO, Iraq, Petraeus

As predicted weeks ago the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media are going to address the (predicted as positive) September report of General David Petraeus by either ignoring it or offering rebuttal through alternative reports (alternative, of course, being "expertise" from those not actually in Iraq and with longstanding agendas).

The first example of this is the latest NIE, or National Intelligence Agency, a collaborative summary of latest analysis created by all US intelligence agencies.

[Washington Post] ...release of a new National Intelligence Estimate that provided a mixed assessment on Iraq seven months after Bush ordered more U.S. troops to the country. The report, produced by the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies, determined that "there have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq's security." But it predicted that the Iraqi government "will become more precarious" in the next six to 12 months, with little hope of reaching accommodation among political factions.

The NIE seemed to support an emerging consensus among politicians in Washington that the troop buildup has made a difference in quelling violence in some pockets of Iraq but that the political reconciliation needed for long-term resolution appears broken. Advocates of withdrawal and supporters of the war alike quickly picked out parts of the report to bolster their arguments on future U.S. strategy in Iraq.
Both sides will cherry pick, eh? Well it's worth remembering that the reason why the president will often declassify documents with more frequency is because in 2006 certain intelligence analysts with an agenda leaked all the negative aspects of that year's NIE to the New York Times. Talk about cherry picking! After that, it was decided that they may as well release the whole thing and let people decide for themselves. Should this year's NIE go similarly you may see the same.

A couple of other warnings about NIEs should be noted too:

- NIE's don't have the greatest track record of accuracy: The 2002 NIE, you'll recall, proclaimed a likelihood of large quantities of WMD to be found in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Our intelligence services, it can be argued, aren't much better then they were 5 years ago.

- As Thomas Joscelyn points out, "it is often not clear what their [the intelligence community's] judgments are based on, what type of intelligence went into formulating these judgments, and what intelligence was left on the cutting room floor."

- More Joscelyn: "Since the NIE is a consensus document [of 16 intelligence agencies], the analysis is also confined to the lowest common denominator that all agencies can agree upon, which doesn't tell you much more than you can learn from reading open sources or making simple guesstimates. This is not to say that the NIEs are totally without merits, and occasionally they contain an interesting nugget of information."

In other words, what's the point? Well, other than providing lots of soundbites to blowhard politicians.

Here's Rich Lowry's take:

On balance, I think it helps the anti-withdrawal side. It says there has been "measurable but uneven" progress and forecasts continued improvement if we continue robust counterinsurgency operations. What has been the "bottom-up" approach of the surge represents "the best prospect for improved security over the next six to 12 months." Iraqi forces operating with coalition forces "have performed adequately, and some units have demonstrated increasing professional competence." Deployment of Iraqi forces to Baghdad represents "significant progress since last year" when Iraqi soldiers deserted rather than leave home. It says perceptions that we will withdraw will encourage more sectarian violence, and Iraq's neighbors "will continue to focus on improving their leverage in Iraq in anticipation of a Coalition drawdown." And, in a key finding, "We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primarily combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI from establishing a safehaven would erode security gains achieved thus far." Of course, the NIE says plenty of grim things too, but all of the above are facts that are inconvenient for the Democrats politically—and facts that they didn't have to deal with prior to the surge. The NIE has fodder for both sides (read all the key findings here), but on balance, it is another sign that the successes of the surge are shifting the grounds of the debate over the war in a way that helps opponents of withdrawal.
Maybe John Warner should have waited a few days before opening his trap.

If you like, you can read the entire NIE here.

Labels: Congress, democrats, GAO, intelligence, Iraq, NIE, Petraeus

Via the Washington Post, the Democrats are showing their hand on how they plan to undermine the potentially promising report on Iraq that General David Petraeus is scheduled to give in September.

So, what's their plan?

Simple. The Democrats will simply ignore the Petraeus report and instead cite an alternate Iraq report that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) - an oxymoron if there ever was one - will give on September 1st.

The GAO, if you don't recall, is the same group that year after year after year misses the mark on deficit/surplus projections because they determine tax policy with static scoring rather than dynamic scoring. This means the GAO fails to take into account how a tax increase will curb corporate and private spending and investment behavior, or how a tax cut can encourage corporate and private spending and investment.

Thus, they're left looking generally incompetent and useless when every tax cut ends up INCREASING TAX REVENUES (because of the volume of spending.)

So this group that never forecasts economics correctly will be relied upon by Democrats to provide an accurate assessment of Iraq -- a far more complicated project.

"The 15-person team includes an array of specialists, lawyers, economists, foreign policy experts and statisticians," according to the Post, but will most certainly not include one... you know... anybody who actually serves in Iraq.

Does one need any more proof that Democrats have made full capitulation on Iraq a foregone conclusion?

Labels: capitulation, Congress, democrats, GAO, Iraq