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Benchmarks
Does the admin realize they have a few of their own to report on?
©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/My Town
Essays/benchmarks.htm
8/9/07
General David Petraeus will be giving his report on the Iraqi situation on
9/11. Everyone be sure to waggle your flags as the administration tries, yet
again, to tie Iraq to that event six years ago. Pretty cheeky for a President
who not only has utterly failed to secure justice for that event, but who has
openly said that he doesn’t care where Osama bin Laden is.
Who would have guessed that when actually challenged in a Pearl Harbor type
manner, Republicans would turn out to be cowards? Three thousand dead, the
President doesn’t care where the perpetrator is, and they take it. Amazing.
Petraeus’ speech will get as much attention as Colin Powell’s to the UN did in
February of 2003. Both will be giving military assessments that will be used by
the administration to guide American policy in regard to Iraq. This doesn’t bode
well, since Powell was lying through his teeth. Remember the sophisticated
chemical and biological weapons lab that turned out not to have any running
water and only a Honda® generator to supply power?
After touting the speech (“The Benchmark Speech”) for months, the administration
abruptly decided they wanted him to give the results to them privately. When
Congress made it clear that wouldn’t fly, they asked Congress to receive the
speech in closed session. When THAT didn’t work, they offered to write the
speech for Petraeus.
They’ve given all that up now, which means either they were able to pressure
Petraeus into giving the type of speech they want to hear, or they are counting
on their base to remain characteristically dumb and ignorant, and dismiss any
negative response to the speech as just noise from those Osama bin Laden
supporters over at the leftie blogs. (Former journalist David Brooks today tried
tying Osama to leftie blogs, a sign of how far he, and the administration he
toadies for, have fallen. In fairness, though, there are those who think the
tape is a fabrication by the administration, who tried to make a fake OBL sound
like an American leftie in order to try to discredit administration foes)
.
The administration has prepared for Petraeus’ speech by redefining some of the
events in Iraq to make it look like the “surge” worked. To this end, they noted
that the number of Iraqis and American soldiers killed has dropped between March
and August. It has, just as it does every year, because in March, the daytime
highs in Baghdad are about 75F, and in July they are about 110F and up. It’s too
bloody hot to go about potshotting Americans for most folks. But while America’s
pathetic mainstream media grasped at this desperately, they ignored the fact
that compared to all previous years except 2003, when the invasion took place,
it’s the bloodiest year yet for American troops. Nobody’s quite sure how many
Iraqis are dying, and the military saw to it that sectarian deaths were down by
redefining a sectarian murder. Paul Krugman, who serves as a good reminder that
not everyone who works at the New York Times is an administration whore, writes,
“Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to
distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important);
according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one
intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that ‘if a bullet went through the
back of the head, it's sectarian. If it went through the front, it's criminal.’
So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead
people.”
Well, this IS the administration that so narrowed the definition of torture that
it excluded water-boarding, exposure to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation
for months at a time, and use of dogs to terrify. It defines defending American
freedom as reserving a power to tap anyone’s phone, or to snatch people off the
streets and lock them up for years without trial. In light of that, it makes
perfect sense that they would define “bad murder” as opposed to “good murder” in
terms of which direction the bullet was fired from.
The benchmarks themselves consist of 18 elements the administration hoped
America might have a prayer of accomplishing by September.
First, none of them are goals that are to be attained. All that is required for
a “satisfactory” ranking is that “concrete signs” of progress be made toward
attaining said goal some day.
Second, some of the benchmarks aren’t very awe-inspiring. One of them is to form
a committee to explore methods of amending the national constitution. It also
mandated forming regions, creation of something called an “investment law”
(which I suspect has less to do with finances and more to do with determining
the nature of official functions) and an independent electoral commission. I’m
happy to report that one got one of the few “satisfactory” ratings.
Third, the benchmarks were determined in the 2007 Supplemental Appropriations
Act (P.L. 110-28), and it seems that there are benchmarks, and then there are
the official P.L. 110-28 benchmarks. The former are the 18 of fame that Petraeus
will be conning the American people about. The ones Congress demanded were
tougher, and the admin generously increased the number of benchmarks, just to
show they really wanted to do the job right, and just coincidentally, add a few
easier questions to the test so the score wouldn’t look so bad in September.
Fourth, the really, really big ones are missed. For example, benchmark #3 deals
with the question of who gets the oil, or, more to the point, money from sale of
the oil? Nearly all of it is in Kurdish regions. The Kurds, understandably,
don’t want to see the money going to the Sunnis, with whom they’ve had an
unhappy relationship. The Sunnis and Shiites don’t want to live in poverty. And
nobody thinks America is entitled to a slice for “liberating” their country.
They haven’t got far on that one, not unexpectedly.
Estimates on the rates of “satisfactory” on these benchmarks range from two to
five, depending on whether the benchmark was shot in the front or from behind.
And of course, there are the troubling realities of life in Iraq. The government
is believed to be on the verge of utter collapse. Since this is the same
government that is supposed to attain these benchmarks in the first place, that
would make the whole issue moot, and move everything back to square one. The
good news is that it wouldn’t have to move far to get back there.
One hopeful element, albeit a slim one: the British left Basra last week, and
thus far, the region has remained quiet. There’s no guarantee it will stay that
way, of course, but it does offer a thin reed of hope to the Iraqi people.
Should it stay calm and pull itself together, it will slap down the one
remaining rationale the admin offers for staying: that the Iraqis need us to
prevent them from turning into a Lord of the Flies type of thing. America has
done so much to improve public order in Iraq, you see. If it weren’t for
America, millions of Iraqi children would have no idea what an IED was. In fact,
the term wouldn’t even exist.
The idea of noble America bringing the light of civilization to the savages is
perhaps the single most disgraceful lie this administration has told in regards
to Iraq. It deserves to be slapped down hard.