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You Call That Progress?The outrageous White House report on Iraq.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, July 12, 2007, at 5:47 PM ET
George W. Bush. Click image to expand.

The White House report released today, on how far Iraq has progressed toward 18 political and military benchmarks, is a sham.

According to the report, which was required by Congress, progress has been "satisfactory" on eight of the benchmarks, "unsatisfactory" on another eight, and mixed on two. At his press conference this morning, President Bush, seeing the glass half full, pronounced the report "a cause for optimism"—and for staying on course.

Yet a close look at the 25-page report reveals a far more dismal picture and a deliberately distorted assessment. The eight instances of "satisfactory" progress are not at all satisfactory by any reasonable measure—or, in some cases, they indicate a purely procedural advance. The eight "unsatisfactory" categories concern the central issues of Iraqi politics—the disputes that must be resolved if Iraq is to be a viable state and if the U.S. mission is to have the slightest chance of success.

Here are the benchmarks at which, even the White House acknowledges, the Iraqi government has not made satisfactory progress:

  • Legislation on de-Baathification reform
  • Legislation to ensure equitable distribution of oil revenue without regard to sect or ethnicity
  • Setting up provincial elections
  • Establishing a strong militia-disarmament program
  • Allowing Iraqi commanders to pursue militias without political interference
  • Ensuring that the Iraqi army and police enforce the law evenhandedly
  • Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces capable of operating independently (here, the number has actually gone down)
  • Ensuring that Iraq's political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of Iraqi security forces

The status of former Baathists, distribution of oil revenue, local elections, disarming militias, sectarianism within the police, the legitimacy of the national army—these are the main issues grinding the parliament to a standstill, aggravating ethnic conflict, and forcing millions of Iraqis to flee the country. These are the issues that the Iraqi political leaders are supposed to be resolving while American troops fight and die to make Baghdad secure.

Yet the White House is admitting that the Iraqis have made no real progress on any of these fronts.

In its legislation requiring this report, Congress stated, "The United States strategy in Iraq, hereafter, shall be conditioned on the Iraqi government meeting [these 18] benchmarks." Yet even on the eight benchmarks that it admits are not met, the White House report explicitly denies the need to change strategy.

The report's account of the eight supposedly successful benchmarks is, on inspection, no less dismaying.

Take Benchmark No. 1: "Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review." The report admits that Iraq's "political blocs still need to reach an accommodation on these difficult political issues." (The report neglects to point out that many of the Sunni blocs are boycotting the parliament.) And yet it declares that the Iraqi government has made "satisfactory progress" because the constitutional review is "now underway."

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at .
Photograph of George Bush by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I'm truly grateful to Kaplan and other honest journalists for cataloguing yet another example of semantic games and deceit from the Bush administration. But it's getting to be such old news by now. When is it ever not the case? What else can anyone do about it? When does anybody face consequences for having lied or for making a stupid decision?

In its brutal inevitability, the news from the Bush administration is like watching "I, Claudius," that great old serial epic about the depravity and treachery of ancient Rome, on TV. We all know that Rome is going to burn in the end, that it's the way it was and always will be, and that we're pretty much helpless spectators to the whole tawdry debacle. Can 2009 and a new administration possibly get here fast enough?

--fingerpuppet

(To reply, click here.)

When was the last time you heard a general say, "Well, we really screwed up, and our mission failed miserably! It's just not going to work!" Does anyone, anywhere, expect that Petraeus and the president are going to say in September anything except, "We just need more time. We can't set any deadlines."

--StevieB

(To reply, click here.)

Our own government routinely fails to make any progress on even simple issues, let alone complex issues. By Kaplan's standard's, our government would largely be seen as a failure.

During our nation's beginning, it took years - and two constitutions - to resolve the myriad issues in our country. And, even then they still festered for decades until our own Civil War.

Let's face it folks, if you thought we could be out of Iraq in anything less than 15 years, you were kidding yourself. You better hitch 'em up for the long haul.

--lightray9a

(To reply, click here.)

How much time does this moron need? How much money? How many troops need to die in a pointless war with no measurable means of determining "victory?"

We have picked one side of a civil war and there is little or no relevance to the safety of the United States involved at all. Bush had to lie to make the threat credible and now we see that Saddam had been beaten down to nothing in the first Gulf War. With Saddam dead, a civil war now exists with no clear front runner.

Like Iraq, Vietnam was never a real threat the USA but there was a fear that if one side of the civil war got into power there might then be a threat. Interestingly enough, the wrong side won and not only did they not represent a threat to the USA, but they are now doing a ton of business with the USA....so much for the Domino Theory.

The USA cannot be in the business of controlling who runs other countries-this is what empires do-and is that what we are or what we want to be? We can and should have a strong defense, but this should not be a strategy of controlling other nations and peoples by proxy

--RMLReturns

(To reply, click here.)

(7/15)

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