Why cry over the war when you can laugh? - Benchmarks & the Iraqi government

George W. Bush is my president, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like seeing him squirm – especially given his administration’s casual relationship with the truth. And I absolutely loved watching the White House scramble to respond to leak of the Government Accountability Office’s draft report entitled “Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq” last Thursday.

The most important thing to understand about the GAO’s report on Iraq is that it requires a strict yea-or-nay, it-is-or-it-ain’t judgment on the Iraqi government’s progress on 18 specific benchmarks (3 yes, 15 no, 2 mixed). The most important thing to understand about the timing of the leak of the draft report is that it was published only five days before the actual report was to be submitted to Congress. So what was the point of the leak? To let the my fellow Americans know what was in the report before any of the president’s sympathizers got their hands on it. It says, “While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced.” It says attacks against Iraqi civilians haven’t changed and the “capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved.” The overall conclusions are that “key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion (they promised to spend) in reconstruction funds.”

The scrambling started immediately, with outgoing White House Press Secretary Tony Snow up first. “Well, look, it's no secret that many of the benchmarks have not been met,” he said. “What is significant is that there's progress toward a great number of them.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, he went on to say, “look, if you're trying to do an overall judgment on what's going on in Iraq, the idea that somehow your standard is everything completed, or nothing completed seems to me to be a pretty high standard to meet. On the other hand, if you're trying to figure out, are you making progress toward the goals that you have set out, that's probably the proper way to look at it.” According to the White House, actually meeting the benchmarks seven months after they were agreed to isn’t as important as making progress on them. I’m sorry, but my fellow Americans didn’t vote the president’s Republican enablers out of Congress last November because we wanted to see more progress in Iraq, we did it so we could see more progress in getting our troops out of Iraq.

I understand Tony Snow is a cancer survivor and that he’s leaving the White House because it’s become too expensive for him to continue to serve his country, but does he really want to go out like this? Defending an inept and incompetent government which refuses to listen to or respect the will of its people? Or worse – defending the government of Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki? Wouldn’t he rather be remembered as a hack Fox News correspondent than the third in a succession of talking monkeys that President Bush sends to the White House briefing room to spin the day’s talking points to the assembled press corps?

As much as I enjoyed watching Tony Snow try to stay on message while being asked about the GAO draft report, Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, and Senator Larry Craig in the same briefing, the real fun was watching President Bush’s reaction. He didn’t wait five days for the actual report, he made a surprise trip to Iraq where he met with General Petreaus, Ambassador Crocker, and the “leaders” of Iraq’s central government the day before the report was to be submitted. No better way to get in front of the story (and dominate a news cycle at the same time) than using Air Force One. What made the whole spectacle hilarious was that this meeting didn’t take place in Baghdad (the seat of the central government), it took place in Anbar Province. President Bush explained that, though, by saying, “the government they represent, of course, is based in Baghdad - but they're here in Anbar because they know the success of a free Iraq depends on the national government's support from the bottom up. They know what I know: that when you have bottom-up reconciliation like you're seeing here in Anbar, it'll begin to translate into central government action.”

So seven months after the Baghdad Security Plan to provide a stable environment in the capital so the Iraqi government to have one last chance to work out their issues was implemented, President Bush meets with the leaders of that government - in Anbar province - to announce progress in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq. And I have to laugh at this man – if only to keep from crying.