Some qualified successes in Iraq

David Cloud and John Burns:

The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.

But it will qualify some verdicts by saying that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government has been unsatisfactory, it is too early to make final judgments, the officials said.

The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.

The administration officials who provided details of the draft report to The New York Times, insisting on anonymity, did so partly to rebut claims by members of Congress in recent days that almost no progress had been made in Iraq since President Bush altered course by ordering the deployment of about 30,000 additional troops earlier this year.

The report will land in the middle of a two-week Senate debate that has pitted advocates of an early American troop withdrawal against Mr. Bush, who wants to defer major policy decisions on Iraq until September, when a more comprehensive report is due from the top two Americans in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus.

The White House report says the most progress has been achieved in the military realm. The American command’s latest unpublished monthly figures, prepared for the White House report, show a substantial decline in two major categories of violence, the number of Iraqi civilians killed in sectarian violence and casualties from car and truck bomb explosions.

But the report also acknowledges that some military benchmarks have not been met, including improvements in the ability and political neutrality of the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government. Even in some areas where the report will cite progress, the officials in Washington said the document would acknowledge that the overall goal of political reconciliation remained elusive and would chide the Iraqis for failing to take advantage of the presence of more American troops to take more far-reaching steps.

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The Congressional suggestion that "almost no progress had been made in Iraq" was a dishonest political attempt to shape the debate on the Democrats' attempt to force a premature retreat from winning the war in Iraq. It is a mark of the Democrats desperation for defeat that they would be so dishonest. It was also an attempt to try to distract from the really good news coming out of Iraq about the surge and the recent offensive in the belts around Baghdad.

It should also be noted that most of those benchmarks were intended to bring the Sunnis into the supporting the government efforts to end the violence and that has been happening at an accelerated rate since last falls Anbar "reawakening" and this spring and summers showing where the Sunni tribes have turned on al Qaeda and helped the US find and destroy the al Qaeda infrastructure in Iraq. The reports from Anbar alone, must send a shiver down what is left of the spine of the defeatocrats, because it is so much better than anyone hoped for.

Update: Jules Crittenden ask a question about the coverage of surge in Iraq:

Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?

He has a long piece that is critical of the lack of comprehensive coverage of the effects of the surge. I think he is correct in his comments on the AP and Washington Post coverage. However, the NY Times, despite its awful editorial board opinions on the war has had the best coverage this side of Michael Yon on what is really happening. Both Michael Gordon and John Burns have done a good job in the areas they covered.