Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.
Such facts are why I am not all that encouraged by the progress made by The Surge. While I will allow that there has been some progress made on the security front in some quarters, focusing solely on that as if we have turned a corner misses the point that the fundamental issue at hands remains state-building (i.e., the political and infrastructure side of things). The White House and many of the pro-war punditocracy wish to treat the security issue as co-equal, if not more important than, the political side of things. While I readily allow, and have from the beginning, that security is necessary for political progress, short-term security is not the primary goal, not by a longshot.
Even if one believes the surge to be a remarkable policy achievement, one has to admit that the US military cannot surge indefinitely. As such, the real measure of success is about things other than security, because it isn’t as if the surge is eliminating all possibles founts of violence. No, the surge is primarily suppressing them. That is an important distinction, as it means that once the surge ends, there will be a resumption of violence.
And beyond that, the report isn’t that sanguine on whether the security situation has really improved all that much:
“While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced,” it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that “the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved.”
“Overall,” the report concludes, “key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds,” as promised.
[...]
Overall, the draft report, titled “Securing, Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq,” says that the Iraqi government has met only two security benchmarks. It contradicts the Bush administration’s conclusion in July that sectarian violence was decreasing as a result of the U.S. military’s stepped-up operations in Baghdad this year. “The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July,” the GAO draft states.
For the country to be failing on so many of the benchmarks ought to give even the rare optimist on Iraq a healthy dose of pause.
As a side note, our inability to provide security immediately after the invasion is one of the prime mistakes that was made at the begging of this enterprise. The problem has been the need to try and put the lid back on Pandora’s Box after allowing the situation to degenerate to the level that it has.
BTW, I wonder how many of the administration’s booster will ignore what the document says and instead wail about the fact that it was leaked.
Update: I have posted a graphic that details the benchmarks and their status: click.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has agreed to step down as army chief as part of a broad and once-unthinkable agreement being finalized with his chief political rival, Benazir Bhutto, officials on both sides said Wednesday.
The agreement, if completed, would probably permit Musharraf to continue as president and allow Bhutto to return to Pakistan after eight years of exile to try to win back her old job as prime minister, officials said. More broadly, the deal would fundamentally alter the political landscape in Pakistan, a top U.S. ally on counterterrorism but also a haven for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.
It is an interesting development that was put into motion by the Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed ousted PM Nawaz Sharif to return to the country from his exile in Saudi Arabia.
As the saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows:
Bhutto seems to revel in casting herself as everything Musharraf is not, and vice versa. Bhutto, who served twice as prime minister in the 1980s and 1990s, has spent much of the past eight years decrying Musharraf as “a military dictator.” Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 military-led coup, has accused Bhutto of rampant corruption and has dismissed her tenure as “sham democracy.”
Still, for the moment at least, the two need each other.
The deal would solidify Musharraf’s position and give Bhutto the chance to stage her own return to power:
For Bhutto, the agreement would allow her to return to Pakistan and stand for election to the parliament. If her party, the center-left Pakistan People’s Party, won the most seats, as projected by opinion polls, she would be in line to serve as prime minister.
Bhutto is also expected to win the dismissal of various corruption charges against her and other government officials stemming from the late 1980s and 1990s.
New Turkish President Abdullah Gul has approved a cabinet submitted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Islamist-rooted AK Party.
The new cabinet is said to unite secular and Islamic-minded politicians.
Meanwhile, the military continues to issue warnings:
Turkey’s military chief warned on Monday that “centres of evil” were trying to undermine the state.
Gen Yasar Buyukanit did not name those he said were “trying to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic” but analysts said the statement was clearly aimed at Mr Gul, a devout Muslim.
Colombia is to seek the extradition of an Israeli mercenary, convicted in absentia of training death squads, who has been arrested in Russia.
Yair Klein, a former Israeli colonel, was held at a Moscow airport on an international arrest warrant.
He was sentenced to 10 years for training drugs traffickers and right-wing paramilitaries in the 1980s.
Prosecutors say those trained went on to carry out some of the country’s most notorious political assassinations.
[...]
The Colombian authorities say Klein was hired by the Medellin cartel of drug lord Pablo Escobar, which set up a training school for paramilitaries and assassins in Colombia.
Wild. It sounds more like the plot of a movie than real life, yet it is sadly quite real.
I know that one of the founders/leaders of the paramilitary group the AUC, the late Carlos Castaño went to Israel to obtain training from mercenaries. I wonder if that training involved Klein?
Last week I noted that the Pakistani PM that Musharaff ousted in a 1999 coup was going to be returning to Pakistan. Now another former PM, Benazir Bhutto, is getting involved as well (via the CSM, Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan’s new leadership contender):
President Pervez Musharraf’s meticulously managed political stage was jolted this week by the news that he may face challenges to his power from not one, but two, of Pakistan’s exiled former prime ministers.
The Supreme Court ruled that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – whom General Musharraf ousted from power in a 1999 military coup – is free to return to the country, adding to the political challenge posed by another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who willingly left Pakistan after Musharraf’s coup. Musharraf reacted by immediately sending an envoy to London to push along a sputtering and stalling political deal with the two former leaders.
The London meeting may indicate that the Pakistani president, faced with two formidable former prime ministers as opponents, a newly emboldened judiciary, and hostile public opinion polls, may be ready to cede some of the political space that he has dominated by force and manipulation for nearly eight years.
The story indicates that Bhutto could be the wild card, either allying with Musharaff or with Sharif.
Sharif will cause concerns with the US because:
“Sharif is close to the religious parties,” explains Rais. Sharif’s government had attempted to introduce Sharia, Islamic law in Pakistan months before being overthrown, and individuals in his close immediate circle overlap with the Jamat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party in Pakistan. “His agenda of religious identity politics doesn’t sit well with many, especially the Western powers,” says Rais.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has given President Musharraf 48 hours to respond to her demands for a power-sharing deal, media reports say.
[...]
Ms Bhutto wants a clear statement the general will resign as army chief of staff before year end, some say before a presidential vote due in the autumn.
She also wants a pledge to remove legal obstacles currently preventing her from becoming prime minister.
One supposes that she is using the re-emergence of Sharif as a vehicle for making demands. The degree to which she can back up her bravado is another issue.
Senate Republican leaders called for an ethics committee review Tuesday into Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea in a police sting operation this summer in an airport men’s room.
Hardly a surprising move.
I must confess, the more I think about it, one does have to wonder about what Craig did and whether it was worthy of arrest (or, at least, whether it would have led to a conviction. Commenter Max Lybbert and TPM’s David Kurtz both rightly note that the described behaviors hardly appear to sum to illegal activities).
From the AP report:
the officer saw Craig gazing into his stall through the crack between the stall door and the frame, fidgeted with his fingers and returned to gazing through the stall for about another two minutes.
After a man in the adjacent stall left, Craig entered it and put his roller bag against the front of the stall door, “which Sgt. Karsnia’s experience has indicated is used to attempt to conceal sexual conduct by blocking the view from the front of the stall,” said the complaint, which was dated June 25.
The complaint said Craig then tapped his right foot several times and moved it closer to Karsnia’s stall and then moved it into the area of the officer’s stall to where it touched Karsnia’s foot. Karsnia recognized that “as a signal often used by persons communicating a desire to engage in sexual conduct,” the complaint said.
Craig then passed his left hand under the stall divider into Karsnia’s stall with his palms up and guided it along the divider toward the front of the stall three times, the complaint said.
Much of that could be construed or explained away as innocent behavior although the hand move is rather creepy.
Kurtz makes a point:
Look, I wouldn’t want to bring my 4-year-old son into the airport bathroom and stumble across two people having sex, gay or straight. It’s tough enough getting in and out of the john without him touching every dirty surface or contributing to the mess with an errant aim. But sex didn’t happen here. Even the propositioning is murky at best. And short of a proposition involving sex for money, what is illegal about inquiring about sex? Tactless, maybe. But criminal?
And the fact that it is described as a “sting operation” is noteworthy. At a minimum one wonders if we are getting the whole story here. Of course, it is possible that Craig was so embarrassed by what he seems to have been attempting to do that he was willing to plea in the (vain) hopes of avoiding publicity.
Update: Note, I am not defending anything Craig did, nor am I trying to excuse it. Based on what I have read, I believe that he was soliciting sex from a stranger in a public restroom, a behavior problematic on a multitude of levels. My point is that if he was innocent, as he now protests, then there was a potential defense to be made here as at least some of the behaviors in isolation could be explained away (all but the hand, really), but clearly he didn’t want to try and make a defense and I think the reason is that he knew he was caught and rather than having to defend himself in open court he was hoping the plea would make it all go away (which was a naive hope at best).
Noriega faces 10 years in prison in France on money-laundering charges.
Judge William Turnoff’s decision was a formality after a judge last week rejected arguments by Noriega’s lawyers he should be returned to Panama.
Of course, as noted before, even if he goes back to Panama he faces charges as well. At a minimum being a former strongman ain’t what it used to be when you got to retire to Miami Beach.
Mr Gul was elected in a third round of voting, after months of tension between Turkey’s ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party and the secular establishment.
The vote came a day after a new warning from the military about attempts to undermine the secular constitution.
Mr Gul, whose wife wears a Muslim headscarf, has pledged to respect Turkey’s secular institutions.
And now we wait and see whether Gul will, in fact, threaten the secular institutions of Turkey or if he will not. Indeed, this makes for an intriguing experiment in terms of various claims about Islam and democracy.
A key issue to watch: Gul and the AKP on the subject of EU entry, a subject which they are in favor of pursing more vigorously.
Ever wonder about the origins of Iowa and New Hampshire’s coveted place on the electoral calendar? Now the truth can be revealed (via Andrew Malcom blogging at the LAT’s Top of the Ticker blog: A political primer on primaries
Who knew? Of course, if the Founding Fathers wanted it, it must be good!
But wait, there’s more!
owa has become such an important part of the presidential selection process because with all of its empty space and 95% white population it is so totally unrepresentative of the American nation. New Hampshire is an essential part of the primary process because the Manchester Union-Leader says it is and no politician wants to be the one to tell that newspaper that the 19th century ended some time ago.
About 2,800,000 of Iowa’s less than 3 million residents won’t have anything to do with a caucus session. It won’t look that way on TV though. In New Hampshire, where probably four out of ten voters won’t bother, TV coverage will show people trooping through snow into schools all day, even though the campaigns’ political managers will know before brunch who’s won. Everyone keeps the secret to boost TV ratings that evening.
