Forget “Discrete Benchmarks”

The fatigue of the war in Iraq is so strong that not only are many of Bush’s guys bailing out on him, but even our own ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, paints a grim picture that the administration isn’t too jazzed about hearing.  This is from today’s NY Times:

In setting out what he [Crocker] called “the kind of things you have to think about” before an American troop withdrawal, the ambassador cited several possibilities. He said these included a resurgence by the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which he said had been “pretty hard-pressed of late” by the additional 30,000 troops Mr. Bush ordered deployed here this year; the risk that Iraq’s 350,000-strong security forces would “completely collapse” under sectarian pressures, disintegrating into militias; and the specter of interference by Iran, neighboring Sunni Arab states and Turkey.

The ambassador also suggested what is likely to be another core element of the approach that he and General Petraeus will take to the September report: that the so-called benchmarks for Iraqi government performance set by Congress in a defense authorization bill this spring may not be the best way of assessing whether the United States has a partner in the Baghdad government that warrants continued American military backing. “The longer I’m here, the more I’m persuaded that Iraq cannot be analyzed by these kind of discrete benchmarks,” he said.

After the Iraqi government drew up the first list of benchmarks last year, American officials used them as their yardstick, frequently faulting the Iraqis for failure to act on them, especially on three items the Americans identified as priorities: a new oil law sharing revenue between Iraq’s main population groups; a new “de-Baathification” law widening access to government jobs to members of Saddam Hussein’s former ruling party; and a law scheduling provincial elections to choose representative governments in areas where Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds are competing for power.

But Mr. Crocker said there were better ways to measure progress, including the levels of security across Iraq, progress in delivering basic services like electricity to the population, and steps by Iraqi leaders from rival groups to work more collaboratively.

Measured solely by the legislative benchmarks, he said, “you could not achieve any of them, and still have a situation where arguably the country is moving in the right direction. And conversely, I think you could achieve them all and still not be heading towards stability, security and overall success for Iraq.”

And then…

You have the Republican vs Republican cage match (thanks to Talkingpointsmemo)where it’s clear someone hasn’t been drinking their daily pint of Kool-Aid.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkA-kMmjE3c[/youtube]

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10 thoughts on “Forget “Discrete Benchmarks”

  1. The longer we’re there, the worse things get…and we have no business being there…and yet, I fear that if we leave, history will judge us very badly for the situation we leave behind. The only decent, still not good, answer is to go back in time and not go there to begin with. They’d still have Hussein, which would be horrid. But this seems far worse…

  2. This situation is such a clusterf*ck that it annoys me to even think about it. Which may be exactly what the Bush government wants, for all of us to just not think about it.

    I am really wondering if breaking the country up into three different independent states is the way to go.

    And those poor Kurds are getting it from all sides. I think I read that Turkey is mobilizing, and they hate the Kurds. I need to go and research what these people did (if anything) to provoke such emnity.

  3. I don’t mean to shill for Bush, but the Kurd region of Iraq is doing well. I saw a 60 Minutes report on it months ago, and even though it looked like an infomercial for investors, the conditions were vastly better than the so-called Sunni triangle.

    Turkey and the Kurds are in a long-term turf war that puts the U.S. in a tough situation regarding any kind of Kurdish independent state. Because if Iraq gets divided up and Kurdistan is created, it’s could mean a State to State conflict with Turkey.

    Blech!

  4. “If we leave Iraq now, it’ll go into a full scale civil war”

    I heard that on some news station. So, what does America do? We stay there forever? When do we leave and they start taking responsiblity for their country?

  5. The whole point of this entire adventure, according to some experts, is the oil law. It doesn’t just set out how the Iraqi factions will divide the oil, although that is the part that is being talked about here, it also gives 50% of the oil profits to multinational oil companies. Companies that would have had none of the profits if we hadn’t invaded.

  6. In the NY Times article, the oil law is mentioned, but interestingly enough there’s no mention of multinationals in there.

  7. First I like the new header for your blog, it is sleek and sophisticated.
    Second, that picture is so terrible what a mess.
    Third, war sucks, let move it on out US..

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