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Iraq benchmarks not met: report

Washington: The White House and the Pentagon have challenged an independent Congressional report that casts doubt on the credibility of President George Bush’s repeated assertions that his “surge” strategy is working in Iraq.

A leaked draft of the report, by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, says the Bush administration has failed to meet the vast majority of military and political benchmarks set by Congress this year.

The report says that 13 of the 18 benchmarks, which include military goals, such as the readiness of Iraqi forces to take over, as well as measuring whether the Iraqi government has made progress towards political reconciliation between Shia and Sunni Muslims, have not been met.

Its conclusions are at odds with a similar exercise carried out by the White House in June that was optimistic, reporting progress in several areas, albeit limited.

The GAO report is one of a number of official assessments of the Iraq war over the next month, part of a struggle between the White House and Congress to establish whether the war is being won or lost.

The report, due to be published next week, is still in draft form and segments that were leaked specify which benchmarks are being missed. The Pentagon is trying to have some of its negative conclusions revised. The Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said its officials “made some factual corrections” and “offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades”.

Mr Morrell said: “We have provided the GAO with information which we believe will lead them to conclude that a few of the benchmark grades should be upgraded from ‘not met’ to ‘met’.”

He added: “The standard the GAO has set is far more stringent. Some might argue it’s impossible to meet.”

White House officials said the GAO conclusions were unrealistic because it gave “pass or fail” grades to each benchmark instead of assessing, as the White House had done, whether progress had been made towards the benchmarks. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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