The GAO Report On Iraq

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies.""

Here's a graphic comparing the GAO and the administration's views on which benchmarks have been met. The three that both agree have been met include: "Establishing supporting political, media, and economic committees in support of the Baghdad security plan", "Establishing all planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad", and "Ensuring the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected." Two more are graded "mixed" -- "Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions" and "Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenue for reconstruction projects including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis." The GAO finds that progress on all the rest has been unsatisfactory. "The rest" includes de-Baathification, amending the Constitution, the petroleum law, decreasing violence, training the Iraqi army, disarming militias, establishing electoral laws and so forth -- little things like that.

But hey: at least we've formed some committees!

I found this bit particularly interesting:

"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."

And the GAO is clearly right on this point: "future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies." If the administration wants to ask the American people to go on supporting a policy that seems to have failed, they owe us a detailed explanation of why they think that support would do more than postpone the inevitable.

Comments

[Gary Farber]

It's probably worth pointing out that numerous credible and expert sources -- Marc Lynch, for instance -- opine that actually fulfulling many of the benchmarks would arguably be outright counter-productive in regards to reconciliation.

So the actual value of the Iraqis making "progress" on the benchmarks, were that to happen by some magic, seems quite questionable, in any case.

[Gary Farber]

See also, for instance, Kevin's links here.

And this.

There's a slew of other current Iraq stuff worth noting, to be sure, but I'm only up for a short comment at the moment. I just didn't want to let any assumptions about the benchmarks being an unambiguous good stand unquestioned.

[Gary Farber]

Last point (sorry) on that Iraqi police story, though, is that the key graph in a quite mushy story is this:

[...] Maj. Joe Pierce, an American Army officer working as an adviser to the Iraqi National Police as part of an Army program, said: ‘’I think there is a clear indication that there needs to be some kind of change in the National Police organization. Most of that has to be led by the Iraqi government, because it is a very top-fed type of system.

“If they want to institute change it really cannot come from, specifically, an outsider. It has to start from within, and if the Iraqi government decides that they need to clean up that organization, change will be a real thing and they can clean it up."

Turning the Iraqi police force into a non-sectarian force simply isn't something within the capacity of the United States: not unless we make the Iraqi government an absolute puppet at every level, and that would simply mean that the Iraqi government would be completely illegitimate, which would do no good whatsoever.

So either the Iraqi government -- which is effectively pretty much Shia, where it counts -- is going to decide to disarm their influence over the police, in the face of the Sunni threat, as they see it, or they won't.

There's absolutely no sign that they'd magically start trusting the Sunni and acting against what they see as their own interests.

This seems to pretty much put paid to the American project in Iraq, absent magical mind control rays to get Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds to all start holding hands and singing Kumbaya sometime soon.

I'd prefer to be wrong, but I'd need someone to explain plausible alternative scenarios, and present some evidence that they're likely to occur, and that it's not just hope-as-a-plan.