Goals!
July 8th, 2007This news out of the White House/Iraq is so bad it’s almost satire.
The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war.
In a preview of the assessment it must deliver to Congress in September, the administration will report that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province are turning against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in growing numbers; that sectarian killings were down in June; and that Iraqi political leaders managed last month to agree on a unified response to the bombing of a major religious shrine, officials said.
Those achievements are markedly different from the benchmarks Bush set when he announced his decision to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq. More troops, Bush said, would enable the Iraqis to proceed with provincial elections this year and pass a raft of power-sharing legislation. In addition, he said, the government of President Nouri al-Maliki planned to “take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November.”
Congress expanded on Bush’s benchmarks, writing 18 goals into law as part of the war-funding measure it passed in the spring.
In addition to the elections, legislation and security measures Bush outlined in January, Congress added demands that the Iraqi government complete a revision of its constitution and pass a law on de-Baathification and additional laws on militia disarmament, regional boundaries and other issues.
Lawmakers asked for an interim report in July and set a Sept. 15 deadline for a comprehensive assessment by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador. Now, as U.S. combat deaths have escalated, violence has spread far beyond Baghdad, and sectarian political divides have deepened, the administration must persuade lawmakers to use more flexible, less ambitious standards.
I’m amazed that this White House of Restored Personal Responsibility and Integrity or whatever it was George Bush promised at the start of his term (I think it was “I won’t masturbate into the sink — I’ll masturbate into the Caspian Sea!” but maybe I’m just confused by what he’s done rather than what he’s promised) is urging the world to lower their standards on Iraq. I guess they finally lowered theirs from: “Greeted with flowers” to “Greeted with sunshine, which is still very true!”
Why should Congress give the White House any benefit of the doubt? They’ve done it on the war since the beginning and that’s gotten us nowhere worth going. At this point, it’s time to cut our losses, leave a small presence, and go home. (Why should we leave a small presence? To keep a foot in the Middle East, just in case Iran goes nuclear.) Nothing else is acceptable as the War Plan was botched and all the Neoconservative ideals that were set at the beginning which I believed in have been left to rot by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.