Iraq: 15 of 18 Benchmarks Satisfactory

Here's a little tidbit not getting much play in the media:

 

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Are these the same benchmarks which declare waterboarding is not torture?

 

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mad i have to agree with sam's septisium, who is the indendent monitor of these benchmarks?

Amnisty?
redcross?

Because if its just the US goverment how can you trust it? Especially a person like yourself who thinks that goverments inherently lie and that you should never trust a goverment. I love hearing that from rednecks and then asking them "ok why do you surport the iraq war then?"

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/holds on tight to gun.

 

Says who? Oh, right.

To note an important point ... who says?

The White House.

Democrats, naturally, disagree, with a North Carolina Congressman accusing the report of using bogus standards.

Nonetheless, we'll see what comes.

However, if there's a reason the story isn't getting much play in the media, it might be because it's only a few hours old, and the various expected analyses are not yet done.
____________________

Notes:

"Democrats: White House overrates Iraq progress". Xinhua. July 2, 2008. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/02/content_8471712.htm

 

Clearly, there's been some progress as up to this point they wouldn't dare make a claim such as this.

 

Where have you been all these years????

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A big claim

Yes, there's been some progress at least. The question is how much? At the end of last year, the Iraqis were only up on about three of the benchmarks.

Okay, let's see:

Benchmark (January / July)

1. Perform constitutional review. (Unmet / Met)
2. Enact de-Ba’athification reform. (Partial / Met)
3. Implement oil legislation. (Unmet / Unmet)
4. Form semi-autonomous regions. (Unmet / Met)
5. Hold provincial elections. (Unmet / Met)
6. Address amnesty. (Unmet / Met)
7. Disarm militias. (Unmet / Unmet)
8. Establish support for Baghdad Security Plan. (Met / Met)
9. Provide military support in Baghdad. (Partial / Met)
10. Empower Iraqi Security Forces. (Partial / Met)
11. Ensure impartial law enforcement. (Unmet / Met)
12. Establist support for Baghdad Security Plan by Maliki government. (Unmet / Met)
13. Reduce sectarian violence. (Partial / Met)
14. Establish neighborhood security in Baghdad. (Met / Met)
15. Increase independent Iraqi Security Focres. (Unmet / Met)
16. Ensure minority rights in Iraqi legislature. (Met / Met)
17. Distribute Iraqi resources equitably. (Partial / Met)
18. Keep Iraqi Security Forces free from partisan interference. (Unmet / Met)​

That's a big claim for progress.

I won't even try to figure out what it means in terms of our extended presence, though.
____________________


Center for American Progress. "Iraq Benchmark Report Card: One Year After the Surge". January 24, 2008. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/benchmark.html

 

Iraqis know exactly which Americans/allies made them free and self-determining.

 

The Center for American Progress is a joke.

From its website: "Founded in 2003, CAP is headed by John D. Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and professor at the Georgetown University Center of Law. CAP is designed to provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement. Our ability to develop thoughtful policy proposals and engage in the war of ideas with conservatives is unique and effective."

Try the Economist, which recently had a great cover story about the progress in Iraq and about what still needs to be accomplished there.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11535688

 

Excellent, if there is so much progress in iraq then we can get the fuck out of there soon, no need for mccain "100 year" plan, we can go with obama's "Yo, fuck this shit!" plan

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Calm your regular Obamasms and realize that he's not going to up and leave if he is elected, especially with troop deaths down at the lowest level in four years and some real progress being made on the political front. In fact, he's already distanced himself from his rhetoric earlier in the campaign. In other words, the anti-war crowd, who apparently cares nothing for results, is going to be sorely disappointed when the status quo rumbles on after November.

 

I tried telling a few ladies I work with about this fact and they nearly choked on their lunches. I clipped out an article they pointed out from the Cleveland Plain Dealer where it talked about Obama's timetable for exit from Iraq and glued it to a piece of paper with the words "utter nonsense" written on it. I offered a bet as to who would be right and wrong on the issue, but they declined, so I told them how I placed the article in a file in my desk and would bring it out a year from then (this was a few weeks ago) and would offer it as evidence as to how absolutely nothing in our daily or national lives would change (except for the fact that, if, Obama were elected, Europe would rejoice in a collective orgasm at our "progressiveness").

~String

 

I would think that obama is more inclined then mccain to reduced spending on the war one could question exactly how soon pulling out will happen but fair bets are then mccain will take longer then obama. By the way Afghanistan has been picking up in causalities so this is really two wars we are fighting not one.

 

As far as I can tell from events as visible, calling 11, 16,17, and 18 "met" is a too far removed from reality to be reasonable even from a bureaucratic checklist point of view.

6 is meaningless.

13 and 14 are not interpretable as "progress" without qualification: violence is down in Baghdad partly - some say almost completely, and have evidence - because the bad guys won. Ethnically cleansed neighborhoods with huge concrete walls separating them from their enemies are predictably more peaceful than those still being cleansed and unbarricaded, but that kind of achievement of peace is not usually called progress.

And there are problems with most of the other "met" evaluations, in the list.

And there are problems with the list - clean water and electricity are not on it, oil production is not on it, proper auditing and verification is not on it.

But if we're desperate enough, it will do.

btw: the idea that people who support Obama will be revealed as suckers when he can't or won't deliver is a strange one. And the satisfaction obvious in the predictions of his compromising is even stranger. It's one thing to predict damaging failure of one's governance - it's quite another to take satisfaction in the prospect of an outside shot at doing something about it proving ineffectual.

You're joking, right ?

 

A few things come to mind on your comment here.

One-- Have you never gone to lengths to prove a point (I've seen some of your posts, so we both know the answer)? Although I won't deny the peppering of schadenfreude in proving them wrong (don't tell me you don't EVER rejoice in any of your points/predictions being proven right over others?), it's more about proving a demonstrable fact about the US government.

Two-- Tied closely in with point "One", my statement was more a commentary on the utter disfunctionality of the US government and to total hopelessness of seeing improvement without a full-on constitutional convention ratifying a new government entirely.

Three-- If I had told the same story, but substituted John McCain and some of his nonsensical plans (and they're all pretty much the same pot of shit), would you have responded the same? Or are the hopes of conservatives at "taking America back to better times" invalid and not worthy of defense?

Four-- No one is a "sucker" for voting for Obama over McCain. People are suckers for believing that he'll usher in some monumental shift in US foreign and domestic policy. Vote for Obama if you happen to be of the more liberal persuasion. Don't fool yourself into believing that he's little more than an empty suit. To be honest, the Dems deserve to win. If they don't, then there is something horifically with the party. Nobody deserves to lose this election than the Republicans. Nobody.

I await your response with baited breath (hot-dog baited: Hebrew National, onions and yellow mustard. Yum).

~String

 

One might ask you the same thing, if you are still asserting a lack of progress in Iraq. So are you?

As for predictions and satisfactions and the like, I am simply being a realist -- and reacting to reality, something you seem to touch briefly, if ever. There is no "obvious" satisfaction to derive, and for the second time in as many weeks, I would ask you to quit putting my posts on the couch and assessing their motives. You aren't very good at it.

Back to the issue: As I have noted, Obama, having vanquished Hillary and won over the hard-Left, has already cooled his rhetoric on Iraq in recent months. Secondly, with things going better over there and with Americans distracted by other issues, he knows it's folly to stake the early days of his presidency on a pullout. I expect the situation in Iraq will be even better come Jan., should he be taking the oath of office. The idea that he will suddenly pull the US foreign policy of the past eight years in an entirely new direction is naive and simplistic.

 

Any such hopes of conservatives that are expressed in support for John McCain or anyone else connected with current Republican leadership are invalid and not worthy of defense.

After the third or fourth time someone gets hit by a bus, it's time to assign a little responsibility to their pedestrian techniques.

One can sympathize with the "conservative" so described, on a personal level. But as a group, in so far as they have been the political base of the Reagan Revolution built on Nixon's "Southern strategy" and focused on them, they have done so much damage, in such meanness of spirit, in such ignorance of history and obliviousness of consequence, with such hostility toward their neighbors and feckless, callous indifference toward their surroundings, that it's hard to feel much call to defend them.

Nor is there much need. You ask: "what if I had told the same story but with McCain supporters" - that kind of story, to that effect, in that context and from that apparent kind of motive, but featuring W or McCain or Huckabee or similar supporters, is rare. There isn't a barrage of them, on this forum or anywhere really. That little corner of the world is not bipartisan.

Yes, I know. And I think that stance is a propaganda creation of the authoritarian right (the a-left would use it too, but in the US has much less media access).

 

So by your judgment I should only criticize conservatives and give liberals a chance? Just curious.

To be certain, the Democrats have played their wondrous part in getting our nation to the sad state of affairs it is in today. But we aren't supposed to focus on that right now because of all the bad stuff the GOP does.

No, because the status quo in the leadership and membership of this website is liberal and liberal truths are accepted as fact without support or authority here, therefore you can expect them to get attacked by evil people like myself.

So, you don't think that the current genetic makeup of the government makes it impossible for any reasonable change or openness? The Constitution was certainly a great document, but it's time to update the old bird with some newer concepts.

~String

 

I don't run into them anywhere much.

Just trolling, you mean.

True, especially when those people were Democrats, which wasn't that long ago - may still be so, in a lot of places.

So?

Not at all. And the presumption favors the fascistic usurption of power that has been the central feature of the past generation, by allowing it to regroup from its blowback and incompetence in peace.

This zoo was a deliberate and fairly recent creation, and it can be deliberately destroyed. The media consolidation is far more of a structural problem than anything intrinsic to the government's Constitutional setup - and the Constitution is not the source of that.