Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
April 10, 2008 Mixed results on '07 goals
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON -- As President Bush prepares to address the nation today to discuss General David Petraeus's latest recommendations for the Iraq war, he finds himself facing a familiar scenario: The United States has met many of its recent promises to Iraq, but the Iraqi government has not completed key benchmarks it promised last year.
In his January 2007 speech announcing the troop surge, Bush made a series of US commitments, most of which appear to have been achieved, according to a Globe review. He has created a new position of reconstruction coordinator, partnered US military brigades with divisions of the Iraqi Army, and increased the number of trained Iraqi troop battalions from 112 to more than his stated goal of 132, according to interviews with current and former US officials who served in Iraq.
But in the same speech, Bush outlined a series of tasks that he said Iraq would achieve in the coming year, and most have not been met.
"To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November," Bush said in that speech. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs."
Bush also said Iraqis would hold provincial elections by the end of 2007, pass a law that would allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party to reenter politics, and develop a fair process for amending Iraq's constitution.
"America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks," Bush said.
But of the six key tasks that Bush highlighted in the speech, just one - the establishment of a process to allow former Ba'athists to reenter politics - has been completed. That has led many critics to accuse the president of offering unrealistic predictions about Iraq, and underestimating the amount of time and effort that would be needed to achieve American goals there.
"From 'Mission Accomplished' to the 'strategy for victory,' there are all kinds of predictions he has made, going back to 2003, that haven't happened," said Lawrence Korb, who was assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank. "They keep moving the goal posts."
Administration officials, however, insist that Iraq's government has made great strides in achieving the legislative goals, even if it has not been able to complete them as quickly as Bush predicted.
"What the president did was lay out a vision for how things were going to work," said a senior administration official. "Some things were implemented. Others, people tried to implement and came back and said, 'This doesn't work' or 'the Iraqis aren't going to move this fast.' . . . Even the best of plans, you are going to get 75 percent of what you wanted, but then reality intervenes."
Fifteen months after Bush's speech, the Iraqi government has taken responsibility for security in just half of Iraq's 18 provinces. Iraq's parliament is also still deadlocked over a plan to share oil revenues, although the government has been dispersing funds to most provinces anyway.
And there is no reliable information on how much of Iraq's $10 billion capital budget has been spent, according to a report this past January by the US Government Accountability Office. The report said that Iraqi government data showed that it had spent just 4 percent of the funds by mid-2007, while the State Department said 27 percent had been spent.
Iraq's Constitutional Review Committee, formed in 2006, was supposed to issue its recommendations in the spring of 2007, but pushed back the deadline to this coming August. Provincial elections did not take place last year, as Bush said they would, but are currently scheduled for October.
The plan to allow more former Ba'athists to enter politics was achieved, but has been criticized by some of the people it was meant to benefit who said it could be implemented in a way that would remove more former Ba'athists from public office.
The six key tasks that Bush chose to highlight in his speech last year were among 18 benchmarks the Iraqi government has pledged to complete, and which Congress has tried to tie to future financial assistance to Iraq. A GAO study last August reported that Iraq had just met three of the 18 goals and partially met four more.
In recent weeks, specialists have issued dueling statements about how many of the 18 benchmarks have been met. But yesterday, the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, told the House Armed Services Committee that he expects to release an assessment next week reporting that Iraq's government has achieved "significant progress" on nearly a dozen of the 18 goals, though he did not specify which ones.
But Crocker also warned that more progress needs to be made.
"I think you could get all the benchmarks and still not have sustainable security in Iraq," he said.
April 10, 2008 Mixed results on '07 goals
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON -- As President Bush prepares to address the nation today to discuss General David Petraeus's latest recommendations for the Iraq war, he finds himself facing a familiar scenario: The United States has met many of its recent promises to Iraq, but the Iraqi government has not completed key benchmarks it promised last year.
In his January 2007 speech announcing the troop surge, Bush made a series of US commitments, most of which appear to have been achieved, according to a Globe review. He has created a new position of reconstruction coordinator, partnered US military brigades with divisions of the Iraqi Army, and increased the number of trained Iraqi troop battalions from 112 to more than his stated goal of 132, according to interviews with current and former US officials who served in Iraq.
But in the same speech, Bush outlined a series of tasks that he said Iraq would achieve in the coming year, and most have not been met.
"To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November," Bush said in that speech. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs."
Bush also said Iraqis would hold provincial elections by the end of 2007, pass a law that would allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party to reenter politics, and develop a fair process for amending Iraq's constitution.
"America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks," Bush said.
But of the six key tasks that Bush highlighted in the speech, just one - the establishment of a process to allow former Ba'athists to reenter politics - has been completed. That has led many critics to accuse the president of offering unrealistic predictions about Iraq, and underestimating the amount of time and effort that would be needed to achieve American goals there.
"From 'Mission Accomplished' to the 'strategy for victory,' there are all kinds of predictions he has made, going back to 2003, that haven't happened," said Lawrence Korb, who was assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank. "They keep moving the goal posts."
Administration officials, however, insist that Iraq's government has made great strides in achieving the legislative goals, even if it has not been able to complete them as quickly as Bush predicted.
"What the president did was lay out a vision for how things were going to work," said a senior administration official. "Some things were implemented. Others, people tried to implement and came back and said, 'This doesn't work' or 'the Iraqis aren't going to move this fast.' . . . Even the best of plans, you are going to get 75 percent of what you wanted, but then reality intervenes."
Fifteen months after Bush's speech, the Iraqi government has taken responsibility for security in just half of Iraq's 18 provinces. Iraq's parliament is also still deadlocked over a plan to share oil revenues, although the government has been dispersing funds to most provinces anyway.
And there is no reliable information on how much of Iraq's $10 billion capital budget has been spent, according to a report this past January by the US Government Accountability Office. The report said that Iraqi government data showed that it had spent just 4 percent of the funds by mid-2007, while the State Department said 27 percent had been spent.
Iraq's Constitutional Review Committee, formed in 2006, was supposed to issue its recommendations in the spring of 2007, but pushed back the deadline to this coming August. Provincial elections did not take place last year, as Bush said they would, but are currently scheduled for October.
The plan to allow more former Ba'athists to enter politics was achieved, but has been criticized by some of the people it was meant to benefit who said it could be implemented in a way that would remove more former Ba'athists from public office.
The six key tasks that Bush chose to highlight in his speech last year were among 18 benchmarks the Iraqi government has pledged to complete, and which Congress has tried to tie to future financial assistance to Iraq. A GAO study last August reported that Iraq had just met three of the 18 goals and partially met four more.
In recent weeks, specialists have issued dueling statements about how many of the 18 benchmarks have been met. But yesterday, the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, told the House Armed Services Committee that he expects to release an assessment next week reporting that Iraq's government has achieved "significant progress" on nearly a dozen of the 18 goals, though he did not specify which ones.
But Crocker also warned that more progress needs to be made.
"I think you could get all the benchmarks and still not have sustainable security in Iraq," he said.