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)
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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.