Military say GAO report flawed, factually wrong

Washington Post:

A bleak portrait of the political and security situation in Iraq released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office sparked sharp protests from the top U.S. military command in Baghdad, whose officials described it as flawed and "factually incorrect."

The controversy followed last-minute changes made in the final draft of the report after the Defense Department maintained that its conclusions were too harsh and insisted that some of the information it contained -- such as the extent of a fall in the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating without U.S. assistance -- should not appear in the final, unclassified version.

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Democratic leaders jumped on the GAO's conclusions to bolster their calls for a new strategy in Iraq, and Republican leaders dismissed the report as dated and politically insignificant.

"Today's GAO report confirms that the president's Iraq strategy is simply not working," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) said Pentagon officials had told Republican leaders that the GAO had relied on outdated information. Because the agency was told simply to assess whether the benchmarks had been met, the GAO was set up to deliver a negative report, Blunt said. He added that lawmakers were far more interested in the assessment coming next week from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

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If you are looking for an excuses for failure they are always easy to find. Such benchmarks would have signaled failure in South Korea for example or in other post war occupations. There is clearly much work to be done in Iraq and the victory over our enemies is worth that work and a defeat would create even greater work and greater costs.