Last week, someone leaked an advance draft of a GAO report showing that under Bush’s “surge” policy, Iraq had successfully completed just three of the 18 benchmarks established by the White House and bipartisan majorities in Congress. Today, the GAO officially unveiled said report, and wouldn’t you know it, the results are practically identical.
[The] GAO stuck with its original contention that only three goals out of the 18 had been achieved. The goals met include establishing joint security stations in Baghdad, ensuring minority rights in the Iraqi legislature and creating support committees for the Baghdad security plan.
“Overall key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds,” said U.S. Comptroller David Walker in prepared remarks for a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
All told, three of the benchmarks have been met, four have been partially met, and 11 are the more garden-variety failures. (It’s worth noting that these benchmarks were supposed to be pass/fail, but the GAO apparently decided to give the Bush administration partial credit for four of the benchmarks anyway. So much for the Republicans’ principal talking point.)
Responding to the release of the report, congressional Republicans conceded that the administration’s policy is an abject failure, acknowledged what a mistake it was to endorse such a faulty strategy, and said it could no longer support the war.
Oh wait, that’s not what happened at all. They actually said the benchmark failures aren’t important, and they’ll continue to support the status quo.
Republican leaders on Tuesday showed no signs of wavering in their support for Bush.
“The GAO report really amounts to asking someone to kick an 80-yard field goal and criticizing them when they came up 20 or 25 yards short,” said House GOP leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
I realize 3 out of 18 is a tough report to spin, but Boehner’s argument is really dumb. First, congressional Republicans and the Bush White House endorsed the benchmarks earlier this year when lawmakers passed funding for the war. At the time, no one said, “No, these benchmarks are too hard. The standards are too tough. It’s impossible to pass this test.” Just the opposite; Republicans said benchmarks were a good idea. Using Boehner’s metaphor, it’s more like a kicker volunteering to kick an 80-yard field goal and then blaming his teammates when he misses.
For that matter, Boehner makes it sound as if the policy almost worked. After all, Bush is only 20 yards short on an 80-yard kick. Nonsense. Completing three out of 18 benchmarks is not a near-miss; it’s a failure.
Let’s put it this way — if after all of these months of Bush’s “surge” policy, Iraq had completed 15 of the 18 benchmarks, would war supporters use the results to argue for a continuation of the policy? Would they use the numbers to characterize the policy as a success? Probably. But if that’s the case, they can’t now argue the results have no meaning.
Any intellectually honest response to the GAO report makes reality obvious. Of course, “intellectually honest” and “reality” rarely seem to factor into war supporters’ thinking, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.